


Sweetest of Words

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aziraphale and Crowley Met Before The Fall (Good Omens), Bleeding Eyes, Body Horror, Creation, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Identity Issues, Injury, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Near Death, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Self-Esteem Issues, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), The Fall - Freeform, War in Heaven (Good Omens), breaking bones, dead naming, i mean not in the usual way i guess but still, intimacy issues, new relationship (in the flashbacks), please message me if you notice any?, probably more i've missed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 10:56:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: Aziraphale calls Crowley by the wrong name during sex and it almost kills Crowley, re-awakening memories of who he was before the fall, memories Aziraphale has never lost. Aziraphale gives up a chunk of his soul to save Crowley from dying, guilt and angst and comfort ensue  as they both work out who they are and where this new/ ancient relationship is going.E rated for sex and some serious gnarliness in a couple of chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

**The Sweetest of Words**

“_There is love in your body but you can't get it out_**  
**It gets stuck in your head, won't come out of your mouth**  
**Sticks to your tongue and shows on your face**  
**That the sweetest of words have the bitterest taste** ”**

Florence and the Machine “Hardest of Hearts”

**1.**

**Then:**

_There was no real length to the days back then. We could not have counted them, not so early on; there were no numbers, no rules, no structure to the way the world was spinning itself into being, colours and shapes and senses only just forming, like threads spooling out, forming patterns quite by accident and the patterns became the things and the things became oceans, land mass, day and night – then there _was _day and night and the time of those structures began but still their length was not as we know it now._

_We were like children then, but our discoveries spun life into being. Innocent, wide-eyed angels, we had no knowledge, no awareness, no understanding of anything but the act of creation. This was so very much before Heaven had structure or Hell had begun. We had no breath, no hands, no eyes, but we saw and we touched and we breathed life into our creations all the same, spinning and spilling a world out of nothing, out of dust, out of words. We were, we were, we were, and yet we still were not; identity came with our names, with the things we preferred, with the choices that we made. Identity was the beginning of the end of innocence. _

_Later, when it all got recorded, they claimed an order to it all that did not exist, they claimed a divine omnipotence that brushed all of our work to one side in the claim that She created it all. But She created us to create it with her, then took credit for the good bits, fashioning order out of a beautiful chaos that we could have been content inside forever. _

_It is true though, that the Light was Good. Just like she said. And so it was with the coming of the dawn of the third day that an angel cupped the first wren in its hands, and breathed life into the tiniest of bodies, infusing it with life and the gold of the new day. This day, the third day, was the day we began, several minutes or a thousand years after the first day which was no day at all. _

_You see, that was when I first saw you. As that little bird fluttered and took timorous flight out of my hands, as I lifted it up and nudged it gently, coaxing those little wings into flight – I watched it stumble clumsily up through the air and into the sky and somehow, half way to the clouds, it took wing and found grace and as I followed it with my eyes there you were._

_There you were balanced, poised in a moment of perfection I would never forget or see again; there you stood, apart and alone, shaking sunlight from your hair, spinning stars from your hands, galaxies streaming from your fingertips. I stood in an awe I could never have felt for God, and I knew right then that I was destined for a fall._

_Not all knowledge was real, not even then._

_You were – you were – you were-_

_There were galaxies in your eyes, and sunlight in your hair; you might have been on fire, blazing light and dark, siphoning threads of night and colour and brightness as if from the essence of yourself, and spilling them out into the stars, filling the skies. You smiled to watch them go, as I had smiled at my little bird, and I felt for the first time that clench, that inner squeezing of the soul that I would later connect to a pulling of the heart. _

_All the time I just stood there, wide eyed and staring, knowing for the first time the joy of non – productivity, of utter uselessness, utter adoration. How – how in all of unfinished creation did I even speak to such a creature? This strange, lonely angel, smiling at the stars._

_Then the smile dropped and you frowned, blinked, moved your head, and I saw that your eyes were a kind of glittering gold, a fragment of glitter in the sky blue of my eyes, and you blinked as my little bird fluttered through the dust of a new galaxy, breaking the stream as it spiralled from your fingertips. You dropped your hand in momentary annoyance – and even that was so splendid to see – before shaking starlight from your fingers; it left a silver - rainbow dusting on your robes, and you reached back out for that foolish little bird to land on your finger._

_You stared at the bird for a long moment, head slightly to one side, ever so slightly like a snake, and you smiled in delight as though this small brown feathered thing were the most miraculous creation you had seen yet – you who wove whole galaxies. You gazed at it in a rapture of joy before it flew off and you turned to me, watching you, and smiled and I was lost -_

“_Aziraphale,” you said, and my stupid, half formed mind half choked on you knowing who I was and then remembered and knew that there was only one angel you could possibly be -_

“_Raphael”._

**Now:**

Humans say it can take a long time to get used to happiness, but it feels as though we fell into it within seconds. Time has, once again, come around on itself and ceased to mean as much as it did. Days can last forever, seconds can be an eternity. After waiting six thousand years, it seems we decided not to waste another moment and fell into contented harmony within moments of the apocalypse that wasn't.

I _did _insist we find something else to call it other than _apocalypse that wasn't. _But you said you quite liked the ridiculous mouthful of it, and persisted.

I thought it would have been difficult; getting used to a new kind of life, to living without the caution we had built over the millennia – but in the end – if end it could be called – loving you was as easy and necessary as breathing. I had thought once that if I let any of it out I would find myself hollow, void of everything that had been filling me up all this time. But for every drop of love I breathed out you breathed yours right back into me and so we existed in a perpetual state of exchange.

This makes it sound like we were one entity, harmonious and never in disagreement.

Obviously, we disagreed constantly.

For example just that morning I had suggested we simply fly to the new house in Hampshire. You, of course, had insisted on driving. I pointed out that getting discorporated now would probably be trickier to fix even than it had been before; you objected to my implication that your driving would get us both discorporated and pointed out that just taking wing would probably get us both shot out of the sky as UFO's.

“I absolutely fail to see how two winged beings can in any way be mistaken for great round flying saucers.”

“You're a great, round, flying -”

“There's no need to be rude.”

“You're absolutely right angel, apologise to my car.”

“I will _not _apologise to an inanimate -”

“Inanimate my arse. Get in the car, angel.”

And that, as it it seems, was that. In fact that was only the start of the days travels. Given that when we finally pulled up outside the cottage I completely failed to restrain myself from saying, “I told you we should have got sat nav,” out loud, I'm surprised the evening even went the way it later did. Except.....I didn't quite say that, did I.

“Nav sat?” you whooped, shaking your head in delight - “Please. _Please _continue to attempt twenty first century terminology angel, it gives me fucking life. Say it again.”

“No!”

“Aww go _ooon!”_

Luckily you laughed at me so hard it put an end to the bickering.

-x-

Sometimes time stands still. Sometimes it merely slows down enough that some moments go by in sublime slow motion. The evening before the night it happened was one of those evenings. The house overlooks the sea and the angel and the demon walk along the shore hand in hand in the setting sun. This could become a habit; at any rate it feels like perfection, like every good feeling in the world is racing through the particles between their palms. When one smiles, the other cannot help but smile, where one jokes the other cannot help but roll their eyes. The sun glints off the waves like galaxies in the eye of an angel and the sand glitters with the shells of a million sea creatures, the world in perpetual motion with all that light and flickering and delicate brightness.

_I love you _is safe now, to kiss is safe. To touch and taste and hold and fuck and fuck and love and touch again is the sweetest safeness there is. To burst into wings and continue this prayer, barely aware of who is inside who any more because it hardly matters, only the closeness, the combination, the togetherness and the pleasure. Too much love here to be held inside the body and words will never be enough to express it, six thousand years still pressing on every pore from the inside and in need of release.

Perhaps it is this – the build up of time beneath the skin, screaming for freedom that leads the word to slip out of the angel's mouth. Perhaps it is the way the sand glittered like galaxies, the gold in the demon's eyes. Perhaps it is the sunset staining the black wings red and gold again or the fluttering beat of all those feathers around them. Perhaps it is all the things the angel has never forgotten, clamouring beneath the skin, walled away hard and now rushing to escape. But I breathe out a name at the moment of climax, breathe it in bliss and passion and sincerest love, breathe it out in ecstasy and the utter absence of thought. The name uttered -

“_Raphael.”_

__x__

**I know I'm getting on a bandwagon here but I'm feeling fairly unapologetic tbh, I looove the Crowley as Raphael headcanon. I know there are some amazing pre-fall angels fics out there so this'll mostly be stuff other people have covered and better but I honestly did start writing this before reading any of those other fics so I hope I've not trod on anyone's toes.**

**Obviously I've taken the title of this from Florence + The Machine's “Hardest of Hearts” though tbh the I've taken a lot more than just a title from the themes of this song (which wasn't even a Crowley/ Aziraphale one in my head initially, twas on another otp playlist entirely) anyway go listen to it, it totally fits this fic!**


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

_How does one speak of him? How do words convey his smile, all the more glittering given the weight of time and the golden glow of memory.Vocabulary cannot hold the feeling of receiving such warmth. What is the word for that which cannot be described? Cannot even be explained, it is too full of splendour? _

_Oh yes, that was it._

_Warmer than the sun on the dawn of that third day, trickling down the neck like the ghost of a loving touch, fingertips of temptation on the skin. Temptation did not exist yet and yet – well you carried so many promises in your wake. You lit me up from the inside; I was filled with the gold of your eyes, basking in the light of your stars , stars which still lingered in the blue of fresh morning sky, barely visible in the light but twinkling sure enough. _

_You smiled at me, smiled at the bird as it flew away with the wide eyes of the truly enchanted. Oh that sky, that blue! Oh your wide wondering eyes and your curious gleaming grin as you turned back to me._

“_One of yours?”_

“_Oh!” I said, remembering I existed - “Yes -” remembering the scattered galaxy - “I'm so terribly sorry.”_

“_Don't be,” you said - “Please,” - a _please _from your lips was like a prayer, like a drop of honey I could almost taste. Love like this had not even been invented yet. Then you reached out your hand. I had never touched another angel before – perhaps it should not even have been possible but I had a self and the self has form and the shape of the humans to come was already a dream in the mind of their creator and so – we too were in their image after all, at least at times. So I reached back and heaven sparked between our fingertips, a spark like electricity crackling, and I stared and you stared and we reached out palm to palm to feel that tingling dance; the essence of you met the essence of me and I was never quite singular from then onwards, the colours of me curling like smoke among the colours of you, and yours reaching back._

“_What is this?” I whispered._

“_I think She's going to call it “Touch”.” _

“_I like it.”_

_If I could have blushed, I blushed._

_Heaven was all pearly gates and plains back then, fields leading out towards creation and we concocted our little bits of life in those fields, sending them spiralling out into the canvas beyond. You sat down on the grass of those plains, looking to me to join you in looking out across the unfurling world and I – I was only Celestial, after all. There was no refusing that look. I assumed you would be watching the sun come up – the sight was still so wondrous and new and every day and then night an eternity before it came round again – and yet when I dared to meet your eye it was me of all things that you were looking at, and with an expression I could not fathom._

“_They're beautiful,” you said, though for half a moment it sounded as though you meant something other than “they're”. I felt ridiculous for not understanding, I felt like I would always be ridiculous next to you, and that if you ever noticed – if you ever said the words, “You're ridiculous,” it would break me at least and kill me at worst._

“_The – stars?” I fumbled - “Oh yes.”_

“_The birds.” Your smile was slightly crooked, imperfect, it was the most radiant glorious thing and turned on me! - “Those little creatures you make – they're stunning. I've seen you, really, exquisite.”_

_Well how could I have possibly known what to say?This most spectacular of angels, the one who everyone wondered about, who built galaxies and spun stardust. This one who in ordering the skies called time into being, lent structure to the cosmos. The one who trailed starlight in his wake, whose eyes glowed with a thousand stars – this one praising _my _tiny creations! It was almost beyond bearing. _

_But then – I _was _proud of them, my birds and fish and butterflies – I could not deny the compliment, even from you. Instead I deflected, I tried to let my awe of you show._

“_You create stars,” I said._

“_You create life,” you countered.You were still staring at me and those magical eyes, usually so distant were so warm and close the look alone felt like a caress, I would have given my divinity to know what you were thinking. You reached out almost as though you were nervous and brushed my face; I closed my eyes, it felt like starlight slipping over me like water; it felt like – but that was blasphemous – like a blessing._

“_Azi-ra-phale -”_

_You dropped my name from your lips slowly, reverentially, each note a pearl, a drop of honey on the tip of your tongue. I could not help but watch that tongue move, fashioning the syllables of my name in a way that was almost indecent, curling round the word as though tsting it. I placed my hand on yours, afraid you would move it away; I could not have stood for you ever to break contact, it felt like you should be touching me always, as though God had made a mistake in splitting the particles of us into two beings and to be removed from you now would be the pain of splitting atoms. _

“_Most beautiful of angels,” you said, and I took my hand away, burning to imagine you mocked me, as this had to be, but I tried to sound light, as airy as I ought to be -_

“_Now, don't mock.”_

“_I'm not.” _

_And I had to look away for hearing in your voice that this was true._

_We were creatures of love, I had to remember; so it had to be natural to love so fast, innocent and without shame in expressing the beauty of the other. So why, even then had it felt like something God should never see? Perhaps because we had loved since our creation but never fallen therein before. _

_As the sun rose I put my head on your shoulder and you rested yours against mine, your hand in mine, wings rustling, feathers drifting together, rustling in the first breeze, blown by an angel from over the hills. We laughed flowers into being at the feel of it and everything that was just coming to life inside me fluttered and leapt at the brush of our wings._

“_Too bright?” you asked as I squinted at the break of the sun over the clouds, and you lifted a wing to cover my head, to shield me from the glare; I let slip a tear at the sweetness of the gesture._

“_Raphael,” I said, letting it fall as my name had slipped from you, like a prayer, the only word I could think of that could possible encompass everything I felt._

**-x-**

And just like that, as easy as one word had been to utter, the room was filled with Hell. As though they had been shot from the sky, the angel and the demon fall, no more than a few feet but they break apart violently, tumbling as though from a great height, feathers flying, the room a storm, wings retracting and over it all the most unholy sound of screaming. It is the worst sound Aziraphale has ever heard, even after six thousand years and so many of the world's horrors, shrill and bestial, fierce and growling all at once, like a chorus of voices raised in agonised song, like a church full of tortured animals raising screams to reverberate around columns and vaults. The sound flies out, echoing even here in this tiny room until he feels as though his head will explode.

This is the sound of a demon dying. As soon as he hears it, as soon as he sees Crowley, he knows it is happening. Crowley contorted in the bed, clutching his head in his hands and screaming, a scream he barely makes with vocal chords, but is more hauled up from the depths of the soul. He clutches his head as though it will fly into fragments and it does shift beneath his hands, the bones beneath the skin buckling, crunching like breaking metal; Aziraphale can only stare for a moment in horror as the flesh moves, the bones crack and twist and threaten to escape the skin. The smell of blood is as overpowering as the sound of screams, blood running from his eyes and ears and spilling over the curled back lips, teeth red with it. There are cracks in Crowley's skin as though he is made of glass which now threatens to fly apart.

Several thoughts and feelings fly through Aziraphale's head in the space of several seconds; the first is _Oh god, what have I done. _It is not helpful, and the second - _he's dying, he's going to die – _is no better. Not just discorporate either; he suspects this would be a death there is no coming back from. If there was time he would beat himself up beyond the telling of it with _what was I thinking _and _how could I, _but all he can think instead is _oh god oh god oh god _and _what do I do? But of course, it would kill him, you can't just give back a name stripped from you so savagely, a whole identity dashed on the rocks. Demons can't remember, they're not built to remember, it shatters them - literally, this is Crowley shattering, my Crowley, I've killed him what do I – miracle – it would take a miracle._

Miracles had always been easy before, no more painful than performing a magic trick, but this one – he feels it with everything he is – feels himself having to squeeze it like blood from the pores of his skin – _don't die don't die don't die – _like a prayer, only without any wish at all that God might hear. Even with the effort of will and thought he cannot stop his stupid mouth from moving -

“Oh God -” he says at first before it occurs to him that any more divinity foisted upon Crowley is _really _not going to help and so - “Oh _fuck,” _he says instead, and then - “Crowley,” because it is a truer prayer, because it means more to him than God, because it is the only word in which all the love inside him can be contained. The only _other word _that is, besides the one that did this.

“CrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowleyCrowley CrowleyCrowleyCrowley -”

He cannot stop the name falling from him desperately as he offers up every drop of energy, fear and guilt and love – any more than Crowley can stop that terrible noise from coming out of him, throat blackening and cracking with the screams. A mad part of Aziraphale wonders if – if he says the name enough it might erase the one he should never have said, might undo the damage, might even make him believe that it was the only name he ever thought of him by and that the other has not been on the tip of his mind for six thousand years, the holding back of it like a locked gate catching in his throat. Oh _fuck _ \- if he cannot make himself believe that how is he ever going to convince Crowley? How is Crowley ever going to forgive him – or believe himself accepted for who he is now? But he can't think about that now; he can only think about keeping him alive.

Finally, after an eternity of wishing, after all that outpouring, that birthing of a miracle he has a feeling – rather like he has just been sick – rather like he has just scooped out a chunk of flesh from his own insides - and with that feeling comes a sudden silence in which he falls onto his back, exhausted. Even through the pounding in his head he manages to look sideway to where Crowley is tentatively removing his hands from his head, oh so painfully tentatively, with shaking fingers, but thank everything there is to thank his skin has stopped cracking, the light stopped threatening to spill from the cracks, the bones settled back into humanoid shape, thank everything – Aziraphale can no longer feel him dying.

Instead he curls up terribly, terribly small, and starts to shake. This time when Aziraphale reaches out a hand it does not get thrown away and he finds it safe to get a blanket, wrap up the small shaking demon, and draw his head into his lap, wondering what he can possibly do to make this better, if he is even welcome beide him any more, if and if and if -

He strokes Crowley's hair the way he knows he likes best and tries not to cry out of guilt. He cannot. He cannot permit himself the luxury of making his own distress even apparent right now, he can only wait and see what he can do, what Crowley will give him.

It is not until the early morning sun of the new day begins to slip in coldly through the chink in the curtains that Crowley's eyes open, wide and bright, washed gold with blood, his face still stained, body streaked with it – but his eyes – his eyes so wide and wondering and shocked and unblinking, squinting at the brightness of the morning, staring at the angel as if he can find help there, begging for it silently -

“_I remember,” _he says, and it comes out in the hoarsest of whispers, shaken out of him, painfully extracted, shocked and incredulous and broken -

“_Stars -” _he croaks, blinks once slowly, looks back up, trying to pull more of himself into Aziraphale's lap, to sit up just a little - “The wren,” he says - “I remember how we met.”

-x-

**I have such a boner on for angel!Crowley....hmmmm I. wonder.if.it.shows......:-P**


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

There is a demon in the garden, talking to the rose trees. He talks tenderly to plants these days, after the initial fight back in the London flat. There is an angel watching from the kitchen window who remembers it like it was yesterday; he remembers everything with that clarity- just at the moment this is more of a curse than it has ever been, so he he thinks about the plant conversation readily enough instead.

Series of conversations would be more accurate. The first was the first time he walked into that flat and, shyer than he remembers being in milennia he had asked to be shown around. It was – well, awkward was putting it mildly; the whole place felt sad, like somebody had done nothing but be miserable here; he had been desperate to ask about it, but had forced himself to be tactful. The plant room however had been too much.

“What's the matter, angel?” Crowley had looked round at the plants as though he was ready to incinerate every one of them in retaliation for the look in Aziraphale's eyes.

“No – nothing – it's just – it's just – Crowley why on earth are these plants so terrified?”

“Noooo reason.”

“But they _are! _Aren't you, my dears? Now, whatever is the matter - you're so beautiful, all of you, look at you -” Crowley had rolled his eyes behind their glasses to hear him coo gently at the plants, tenderly caressing their leaves and showing them _love - _of all things _love – _that made some of the pluckier vegetation burst into spontaneous bloom, little pink flowers blossoming in happiness.

“Awww angel, now look what you've done!”

“Yes, bless them -”

“No do not, please do not -”

“Figuratively speaking, of course – they've just been crying out for a bit of affection – Crowley, why are you grinding your teeth?”

Before long Crowley had cracked and pointed out that it wasn't just the plants crying out, and that had been all talk of them aside for that particular night.

After that – as Aziraphale later discovered, bolder and bolder plants had thrown out flowers constantly in defiance of Crowley's glares and after how disappointedly Aziraphale had looked at him when he threatened the buds with a shiny pair of shears, his threats towards the plants had moved first to _now we're going to be very good today and look beautiful for the angel, aren't we? _to conversations that were not threats at all and centred around how all of them, Crowley included, were going to Grow Better and Be Happier because of how happy it made Aziraphale. Now the little conservatory at the back of the house was a small Eden of greenery and flowers, delightful to curl up in on a warm afternoon on the comfy battered sofa in the sunshine. And now the garden beyond was rapidly following suit.

Just, at the moment, Crowley had been out there for three hours, and Aziraphale was – well, he knew it was silly, but he was starting to miss him; he had been watching him nervously for most of the last hour. He had been doing _everything _nervously for the last three days ever since -

The problem was, after Crowley had told him he remembered, he had not gone on to say anything else. In fact he had said very little about anything ever since, beyond that he was fine, perfectly fine thank you no problems here, and to stop fussing will you, and couldn't be better, and no he didn't need to talk, nothing to talk about even though they usually spoke about everything, taking the world apart and putting it back again like an enjoyable thousand piece puzzle on a rainy afternoon. It was what they _did. _But now, he sighs heavily looking out down the garden, if they do not have a proper conversation soon he feels like he might just burst with it.

The sun gleams through the clouds for a moment, illuminating a strip of gold down the green on the lawn, catching the edge of a demon in its light, making him glint with red and gold, light in his hair and dancing redly off his coat; it goes away again soon enough, eaten up by another roll of a cloud, but not before Aziraphale has once again felt that sickening jolt of the past; _you were always so red and gold, blazing like a fire, like a kiss, a star – _he _has _to stop thinking like this, has to. Look what it's done already. And yet he _has _been thinking down these paths, on and off for six thousand years. It's selfish, he _knows _how selfish it is, but keeping _that _name under wraps for so long has hurt him almost every single day, the number of times he though letting it out would bring him at the very least some relief – it is so bitter now to know that it has not.

And yet it has felt like lying _not _to say it.

Ugh, it's such a mess. And – he thinks darkly – if it feels messy for him, then how in the Heaven or Hell does it feel for Crowley? He watches him almost all the time – trying not to because it has to be creepy of him – trying to read, bake, amuse himself in the myriad ways he has been learning to and loving, but it's been difficult. Crowley does not seem to do _anything –_ just wander and frown to himself and talk to the plants. He is torn between his voice of panic crying _I'mlosinghimi'mlosinghim _and the inner voice of harmony murmuring _this too shall pass._

But he isn't even _sleeping –_ not like he normally sleeps, curled up and placid like a reptile in a sunny spot. He sleeps twisted, horribly reminiscent of that moment – what Aziraphale is trying so hard to forget, what he cannot stop thinking about – where his innards writhed inside him, threatening to jump through the skin – he sleeps contorted and wakes crying and screaming, the most horrendous screaming, wailing, animal-in-pain sound. It cuts right through the angel every time, both for knowing the suffering behind a sound like that and for remembering the one time his own heart made that sound, however long ago that was.

The problem is he has never forgotten like Crowley did, all those early moments and feelings, he has never lost sight of who they both were; he has always been able to track who they have become. He can only shudder to think how it must feel to go from not remembering to sudenly having it all thrown back into you.

How could he have _done _that? How could he have been so wretchedly, wickedly thoughtless?

Crowley turns a little at the bottom of the garden, putting him in profile to the angel watching from the window, a red and white checkered kitchen towel in his hands that he has been holding limply all this time. The demon has a little smile on his face and a curious glint in his eye, head cocked watching a bird in the little tree in the right side flower bed. Aziraphale puts down the towel, says “Right!” to himself out loud, and heads out the back door.

He does not mean to sneak up as such, he just moves carefully, quietly, probably because of all those eggshells he feels are under foot. Still when he taps Crowley gently on the shoulder, Crowley shrieks at a shockingly high pitch that might have been funny if their nerves were less frayed, and he spins around hissing, wings bursting out behind him.

“Oh -” he deflates quickly, wings drooping a little, but still quivering as if ready to go into battle stance at any moment - “It's you”. The look on his face suggests that this does not actually make him entirely less nervous.

“Yes – wh – who else would it be?”

“You don't have to dance around me, angel, I'm not about to break. I can crash down pretty hard, I remember”.

A host of expressions cross Crowley's face like a coiling wind, suggesting that he did not mean that to sound so defensive or accusing and he feels bad that it did. Aziraphale's frown in return tells the demon that he _did _nearly break and that he cannot forget it or stop, as he puts it, _dancing around. _

“Crowley -” he begins; Crowley presses his lips together tight.

“That's my name angel -” he snips, with a venom he does not feel bad about unleashing this time - “Don't wear it out”.

Aziraphale actually steps back a little from this lash, feeling the full sting of it and unable to do anything other than bury himself deeper;

“Well, what else would I -” he stops, knowing full well, almost able to see it hanging between them like a fatal weapon. Crowley stares at him, still and deadly until he very nearly runs away. The problem is he knows full well he has been saying Crowley's name over and over for the last two days as though trying to use it as a band aid over the other – the name he should never have said, the one that has lodged in his throat like a knife and sprang out now to leave a terrible scar.

“It won't work,” Crowley says, reading his thoughts as usual, knowing damn well what Aziraphale has been doing as well and they both know what the other knows - “Sorry,” he shrugs, partly sorry, partly not.

Aziraphale is more than partly sorry but has no idea how to even begin saying so.

“Look -” Crowley softens, aware that he has been being a dick and not meaning to, but he's hurting, Aziraphale knows that only too well and when he hurts he lashes out, a part of him just wishes he would lash out harder - “Weren't these some of yours?” He extends a hand, gesturing at the bird, perched on a slim branch barely two metres away.

“Starlings -” Aziraphale cannot help but smile, grateful for the conversation, remembering their creation. “Yes, my favourite”.

“All your birds were wonderful -” Crowley says, his voice distant, dreamy, just a little strained, because the act of remembering still hurts but the memory itself is good - “But the starling -”

“I made it for you,” he says shyly, looking at his feet - “Do you -”

“Remember?” he says it softly but a little growl enters his voice as he says. “Oh yes angel, I remember. I remember it all now. Some of it – some of it I could _kill _God for taking from me. I should thank you -”

“Please – Crowley – don't -”

“Stop saying my name, angel, it won't – well it won't undo the other. Aziraphale -” he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, Aziraphale can see him making his name again silently, can see his tongue moving around the syllables of it slowly, and oh God this is reminiscent too, there is so little that has not happened before -

“I need to know one thing,” Crowley takes his hand, curls his fingers around it like a possession, and spits it out quickly. “Did you love him – back then – that – that angel?”

“What -” Aziraphale stammers, wondering even as he hears his own stupid voice why he has to be so dense - “What angel?”

“Oh nonono, there is no _way _you are making me say it, please angel, just yes or no?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says quickly, unable to lie, unable to meet Crowley's eye either - “More than all of Heaven and Earth.”

“Yes -” Crowley nods repeatedly, rapidly, what Aziraphale has come to recognise as his _this is fine (everything's burning) this is fine _nod - “I know. I – I may have felt a bit the same.”

The point where both parties realise they are staring at each others lips is always fraught with electricity, and it crackles between an angel and a demon almost visibly. Aziraphale almost whimpers when Crowley's fingers caress his face, as though they have not touched in forever – he could almost swear it was easier when they had not touched in centuries, compared to the past two days. He leans into it like a cat to a stroke, just ten seconds of tenderness before Crowley is reaching for him with frightening desperation, kissing him like he needs it to breathe, but he cannot claim to better because he is clutching back, almost crying into the kiss, needing it more than he had thought possible. He has always needed this, sensation, physicality – sensation when it comes to the two of them being an outpouring of emotion through touch and taste and every sense through which they can experience each other, it has been physical since before they even had bodies after all. They break off after an ecstasy of sweetness -

“Aziraphale -”

“Crowley -”

He feels Crowley swallow hard, lean back in as though to kiss him again, ready to, with shaking hands and hammering heart but then it wavers, the shaking stops and breaks and he snaps away, stiff, as though trying to draw every bit of himself that he had just let pour into the angel back, clicking his entire being back into a body that cannot hold it all.

“I'm sorry, I just can't,” he says, and walks away at a running speed back into the house, leaving an angel standing on the grass looking down at yellowing edges of the lawn and wondering what in Heaven, Earth or Hell he can do to fix this.

He stares at the starling, trying to remember that brief flare of hope. A moment later it flies away.

-x-

“_Raphael!”_

“_Aziraphale!”_

“_Look what I made!”_

_We were laughing, coming towards each other at a fast walk through the field. A heavenly field this, but it still smelled redolent of meadowsweet and new created grass, the first insects chirping close to the soil. Sometimes the joy of seeing each other was enough just to laugh for happiness, sometimes we said each other's name just for the pleasure of singing, the peace and the rapture of prayer. It had to be blasphemy but we were too young, too innocent to care. Nothing could touch us in those early days and nothing ever would, we were sure. Vibrant and radiant and dancing on clouds of arrogance and delight, always running to each other to show each other the world. _

“_It's beautiful – what do you call it?”_

“_I thought -” I blushed a little, I did not mean to, even though you had told me how much you adored those blushes - “I thought I would call it a starling – after your stars – I made it for you – you can name it if you like.”_

“_No – starling, I like starling, it's perfect, so detailed! How do you even _think _of it? All these colours and the patterns are so intricate! Here, I know -” _

_You smiled and winked at me – was it the first time an angel ever winked? Probably, it would be just like you to invent a gesture like that. You ran a fingertip over the edges of the bird, just lightly tickling each feather and beak, all the way down to the feet; your finger sparkled with silver glitter, fresh from painting the stars, and when you passed the bird back to me some of that star dust glittered secretively between the feathers._

“_I hope you don't mind -” you smiled. “Now it's ours.”_

_How could I possibly have minded? We bent our heads together over the bird like it was our child, your hair falling into mine, red and gold, and your feathers rustled against mine in a way I would later learn to call flirtatious, sending starlight shivering up my spine as though you had traced your fingers over me as well._

“_Now let me show you my stars,” you said, and we flew out together. “There -” you said, gesturing out - “the humans are going to name that one Alpha Centauri – it's really two stars, but from here – and from Earth it looks like one, two parts forming a single whole – I -” and for once, you were the one to sound shy - “I made it for you, for us, I thought well – you know -”_

_I laughed, not at you of course, but for pleasure because I did know. I was so happy you felt that way too._

“_We'll have to go there!” I said._

“_One day,” you said “I'll take you. One day, we'll visit them all!”_

“_Every star you ever made?”_

“_Every star in the cosmos, my Aziraphale – one day we'll visit them all.”_

_There was not a fragment of doubt in my being but that we would._

_My Aziraphale, you said. I could have exploded for bliss. My Raphael, I thought, but I was far too shy to say it._

___x___

**Yes, yes I did pinch that lats bit from _Doctor Who's _“Every star in the universe – we were going to visit them all”, shoot me. Also it took me ages to get off the first line cause every time I looked at it my brain started singing "There's a demon at the bottom of the garden and his name is wiggly woo" ....cause that's how I roll :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Some Crowley perspective! Also some sex :-)**

**4.**

Every night, every sleep he sleeps, he dreams of falling. Usually he is falling, hurtling through the stars, ( _Raphael) - _screaming at the horror of space, of falling freely through the spaces between the stars, spaces he should have filled, feeling the pain of failure, of rejection, the rape of his identity - (_Raphael!)_ and the terrible terrible theft of his name. He hurtles screaming through the pain of all this stripping away, worse than the burning sulphur to come, worse than his wings, broken and blackening with the worst dregs of night sky, a long terrible moment in which he is no-one (<strike>_Raphael_</strike>_) _and nothing at all, a moment that goes on forever and ever and he is still screaming when he wakes up.

This is the good version of the dream.

In the other version he stands in the sulphur pits; feet glued into lava, unable to move, helpless to do anything. In this version, it is Aziraphale who is falling, and he knows what he must be feeling on the way down because he has felt it all himself and this is worse, worse by far than feeling it all himself because this one – this one is the last of all the angels who could ever deserve to fall. The only one in Heaven he saw any real light and warmth inside. He wakes up from this one screaming, sweating, shaking, night after night, and all he can do is cling to the angel who reaches out to him every time and wait for the worst of the tremors to pass. All he has ever been able to say about any of this is to croak out the one word - _falling. _

The days have hardly even been any better. There is so much he wants to say, so much that needs to be said, but he has no idea where to begin. He can feel Aziraphale watching him, almost all the time, feel his concern, his love, his guilt – he feels it like a burden that follows him, needing him to pick it up, but he cannot, not just now; he does not have the strength for one more gram of angst alongside his own, already weighed down beyond belief. He does not know how he even still moves. Used to being miserable, he supposes, Aziraphale would call that attitude melodramatic, pessimistic, unhelpful. He would quietly denounce the usual coping mechanisms of excessively miserable music and extraordinary amounts of alcohol as “self destructive”, tell Crowley he was “better than that,” or some other such nauseating apropism. So he does not lean to them, much as there _is _a funny old pleasure in making misery his company, that he cannot explain to the angel's ridiculously hopeful and optimistic face.

Sometimes he hates him.

That's almost the worst of it all; the struggles with all the shit he now remembers, struggling with the fact that it was stripped from his mind in the first place – all of that is almost minor compared with how he feels about Aziraphale right now. The feelings are so numerous and complicated he has to put them into three seperate categories – how he feels about Aziraphale, how he feels about how he feels about Aziraphale, and how he feels about how he now assumes Aziraphale feels.

The latter is somehow the worst. Aziraphale, he has decided, does not love him as he is now; he cares for him only in respect to the angel he once was, the angel he once loved (_Raphael) – _ugh, and that name is always there and not there, always on the tip of the most hurting parts of his brain. Aziraphale, he is quite certain, has been sitting on his memories for six thousand years, wanted to say that name for _six thousand years, _struggling in calling him Crowley all this time. Struggling to think of him as Crowley, like him as Crowley, even know who Crowley is. Well great, whoop de fucking doo, he thinks, now he's having all those feelings about _Crowley _himself as well. Long story short – it means Aziraphale doesn't love him, not really, and maybe he never did. He tells himself this is understandable, that it makes sense, that not being able to talk about who they once were, even say that name out loud must have been _killing _him all this time. He wants to feel bad for him, he _does _feel bad for him – yet, he resents him. Resents him enormously. And now, with Aziraphale making consternated, positively constipated moon eyes at him 24/7, he can feel the need to talk about it coming off him in waves and he hates him hurting, it's _annoying _him that the angel is hurting, it damn well hurts him to feel him hurting but he cannot talk about it yet, not even for all that. Cannot say anything to alleviate his guilt and wretchedness because some demonic (ha!) part of him _does _think he deserves it.

Then he finds himself wondering about all these horrible things he's feeling and wonders if they mean he doesn't even love Aziraphale himself – just like the angel can't possibly love him. He'd almost _like _not to love him; hell, he's wished for that a million times over the milennia – and if it didn't work then, it certainly doesn't work now. Of course he loves him, loves him with every beat of his aching heart.

This is before he can even begin to process the memories that crashed back into him when Aziraphale so unwittingly unlocked that door – who they were, how they loved, how it all fell apart and worst of all who _he _was. It feels like having been given someone elses memories, because it doesn't feel like him; that angel and everything he did, it cannot possibly feel like him – except – except -

Except sometimes it does.

It isn't _fair –_ he sometimes thinks, petulently, uselessly of course, and he would have thought he'd grown tired of thinking it over the years for so many reasons; he had _really _got himself used to being Crowley, slowly and with help (and love, yes, for fuck's sake yes) he had even come to start – mostly just in these last few months, to _like _being Crowley, to accept being a demon, and now it's all fucked, he thinks gloomily, like he's only just fallen all over again.

Today he's brooding on the sofa, taking the whole thing up, a little bitter voice enjoying the fact that Aziraphale is faffing hopelessly around the living room, unable to settle, wanting part of the sofa but not even wanting to ask. _Angelic, _he thinks with an internal snort – he doesn't even _miss _it, does not even want to be, couldn't be, not in a million years except -

He felt it; everything Aziraphale poured into him in saving his life, he can feel it wriggling around in him like a small burrowing creature, hurting his darkness with its light – a little bit of his soul, was it? A tiny bit of angel; _fuck, _this just makes it worse! And if that is now a part of him then there's a hole in his angel he cannot let go forever unfixed, but he couldn't even start to think about fixing anyone else, not in this state.

_Also – _and it sounds trivial on the back of everything else but it's not – he wants him. He should have thought he was used to _that _as well, but there it is; desire like a plague come to torment him. Last night they didn't even share the bed; he dozed fitfully on the sofa, uncomfortable in the chill that seeped all the way down the stairs – the chill of an angel, lonely and troubled in its bed. Kissing was a terrible mistake – he had thought it would help, that some intimacy – anything emotional released from under his skin which still writhes from containing so much feeling – well, any kind of outpouring would have to help. Fucking an angel into the floor, that would _have _to help, but – he lets out a groan that makes the angel start, turning to him with that apparently never ending compassion and damnable bloody concern in his eyes. He makes a dismissive gesture and sinks back into the sofa. It's _comfy – _it is, in fact, like just about everything in the house, intensely Aziraphale. He had pretty much given him the run of the decorating when it became clear from those petulently pursed lips and disaproving eyes that his own sense of style and décor was going to go down like a cup of cold sick with the plush loving angel. Ergo comfort. Everywhere. It was currently atrocious to him.

He _can't. _He just can't. Much as he hates to admit it – and has no intention of doing so out loud – he is terrified even to touch him, terrified of any tenderness. He is scared beyond belief that any gentleness, any real affection could lead the angel to drop his guard like he did three nights ago – that it might -shudder- make him say _it _again. More than that, as soon as he gets near him in tenderness, he hears it in his own head, and can feel the pressure build up in his skull all over again and he _can't – _not with the screaming and the breaking and the bleeding, not again.

But then – it occurs to him like a darkly flickering light, a naked bulb in a grim cellar leaping into life – his head swivels to watch the angel with narrowing eyes – there doesn't _have _to be tenderness, does there? He doesn't even have to let the idiot speak. He finds himself staring unblinking, licking his lips, letting a little sigh of a hiss escape him, coiling himself into a position to observe prey, nostrils flaring, eyes dark. Quickly; he has to move quickly before logic brain tells him no.

A second later he has the angel shoved face first into the wall, hand tight on the back of his neck, the other over his mouth before he can even let out an exclamation of surprise and yes, of course, he's hard already, pushing it against Aziraphale's backside to let his intentions be known. With the last of his nerve hanging on by a piece of string, he hisses in the angel's ear -

“I'm going to take my hand off your mouth long enough for you to say no if you want to; barring that, I'm going to fuck you into this wall. Understood?”

Aziraphale nods awkwardly, frantically, a little _meeping _sound escaping him that would have been cute in any other circumstance. Cautiously he removes his hand from its vice-like clamp.

“Crowley -” there's a breathy growl in the angel's voice that goes straight to Crowley's already aching cock; it makes him positively furious and he was already angry enough.

“Are you going to say no?” he growls; Aziraphale shakes his head frantically, adamantly.

“Then not another fucking word, do you hear me, angel?” He removes his hand from the back of the neck, snaking round the body to unbuckle the angel's trousers with a savage but remarkably dextrous yank - “Not – a – single -” grabbing his cock, delighted to find it suddenly and terribly hard - “ - god _damn_ word out of you, alright – I need this hand. Just nod.”

He nods rapidly. Crowley takes his hand back and makes short work of his belt, grasping his cock and pressing up, hard and harsh -

“Miracle yourself ready -” he hisses - “I can't wait.”

And he cannot – _cannot_ give Aziraphale any room to even take the breath that would precede speech. He braces himself against the wall, hands on either side of the angel's shoulders, and shoves his cock unceremoniously into him, snarling softly at the sweet feel of sliding in. Aziraphale makes a noise somewhere between a yelp and a moan and it is the best noise Crowley can hear just now; he has to close his eyes for bliss, pushing in, thrusting the angel's body into the wall, inhaling him, that sweet smell like fragrant tea and meadowsweet and summer wind, tasting it, gulping it down greedily, slamming into him hard and fast and merciless, biting into the soft neck to keep from embarrassing himself with groans. Even then it's too much, too good, and he has waited too long – and it cannot be more than a couple of minutes before he's coming, grinding himself up against the angel like he would like to inhabit the same space, growling in relief around the bite that he does not soften, jerking out every last drop of pleasure that he can. He finds himself clinging, head pressed, nuzzling into Aziraphale's shoulder just a little more desperately than he means to, feeling guilty at himself for the kiss he presses there.

Aziraphale actually _whimpers _when Crowley pulls out and steps back just a little on unsteady legs, still hard and wanting and there is a part of the demon – the part that is indeed the most demon – which is tempted to leave him that way – but he cannot. For his own sake he cannot, because he realises that this frantic moment has only taken the edge off his lust, but also that it _has _got something out of him that he needed to let go of. The word _more _seeps up from his throat like bile -

“Sofa,” he says, in something that thankfully comes out as a rasp, not a squeak. Aziraphale lets out a noise that definitely sounds a lot like _meep, _and this time Crowley does huff an almost laugh, though it subsides back into the low growl of arousal when the eyes the angel flashes at him are so dark as to be almost black. He moves quickly, almost bounding into position, face down on the sofa.

There is a way in which Crowley is surprised; it is not actually at all _like _Aziraphale to be easily submissive, in fact the majority of the time it is very much the other way round – oh they've tried everything – well not _everything – _but they've been working on it – but this kind of sweet submission is usually very far from his natural state; but then again, he's always seemed to know exactly what Crowley needs, like he has an extra sense for it, practically – _divine –_ has to be the wrong word, _has _to be. Either way Crowley has never been more thankful for it than now. Thinking about it, it's only actually been, what? A handful of months since that first night in his flat and frankly it hasn't even taken the edge off the last six thousand years. He's loved him, yes, from the first instant but he's been in lust with him just as long, he could never argue that there was anything pure in his feelings, after all – except – well except for before that when they had known lust without even having corporeal form, when it was far more clearly the urge to combine, mix themselves together, like black and white to form grey. It had felt pure then – agh, _pure _was a stupid word anyway, a meaningless ideal. He didn't need to be overthinking right now; he just needed to be inside his angel again, fucking him until he screamed.

And he does, able to last longer this time, hand on the back of Aziraphale's neck, pushing his face into a cushion to shut off any dangerous words; ramming into him in fury, in passion, in all the itching sensations burning from underneath his skin. If he could fuck his soul into the other's form he would, if just a little bit, recompense for the little bit of the angelic that has been lodged inside of him. If the angel were not making noises of absolute ecstasy he could have felt dreadful for how violently he fucked him, how large a part of him delighted in hurting him with it - but all he can feel from the angel are waves of appreciation and pleasure, delight in the brutality and pleasure in the pain. He never _knew, _never imagined he would like this so much, and it makes him sigh aloud, a wonderful groan of joy, relief, love; when he comes he is so close to saying his name it is temporarily terrifying – names are the most dangerous words of all right now, and he shudders in more than relief and delight to think of it, catching the angel's scream in his mouth when he comes along with him. The fear is enough to have to fuck him again moments later, and again, then put him on the floor and use that beautiful mouth, head thrown back in decadent rapture at the worship he feels himself receiving – not to mention the look in those bright blue eyes looking up at him, not to mention the obscene sight of his cock in that angelic little face. He twists his fingers in the angel's hair hard enough to make his eyes leak as he comes down his throat. He cannot reciprocate, not this time, the bastard might _speak _if he does, better to keep his mouth busy. He hauls him straight into his lap when he comes, kissing him to make sure of it, tasting himself on Aziraphale's lips, finding that he likes the taste. When he fucks him again, he dares as much as to do it face to face this time, mind well blown by now and unable to think at all. It is frankly, perfect.

He remembers as they lie still a little later, Aziraphale's face buried in his chest, clothes long off by now, running his fingers down that soft back, tickling the spine, brush of leaves in the forest – remembers those early sharp golden spikes of what felt like sick lust. He remembers wanting to drag that perfection from its pedestal, violate and desecrate the sacred temple of Angel, destroy him with kisses, defile him with cock – before it occurred to him what desecration really meant- before it occurred to him how much it would hurt him if his beautiful, perfect angel were to fall. He could _never, _not in eternity, do that to him. In the end, the more savage thoughts had come back to him over and over across the centuries; but always tempered by the fear of such repercussions.

After a wonderful, short time that has actually felt pleasantly long, the angel looks up at him and smiles that beatific smile that makes him simultaneously raise an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth.

“That was _wonderful,” _he says, in rather the same way, Crowley sighs, that he would describe a delicious dessert. His shoulders jerk with his snort of laughter.

“Yeah, that – wasn't the reaction I'd expected.”

“Well, what _did _you expect?”

“I dunno – like, horror? Begone foul fiend? I was _trying _to be mad at you – trying to prove to you that I was the dreadful demon you seem to forget I am -”

“You didn't – want me to – like it?”

“No -” he softens wretchedly with a sigh, holds him gently, kisses the top of his stupid head. “I could never want you to dislike anything, angel, you know that, I only ever want you to be happy -”

“I want that for you, too!”

Aziraphale's quick reply is so earnest that Crowley has to blink his eyes rapidly – his tears sting him, and he does not want them.

“Oh angel.” He sighs. He can do it now, thank any power listening, he thinks he finally can - “So I guess we need to talk.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale's eyes go big, blinking with many thoughts - “Yes. Yes please.”

-x-

**I was gonna do the usual - present day and flashback section together - but this was already getting so long the heaven flashback's going in the next chapter :-)**


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

_Do you remember making love in heaven? That is – what it was – wasn't it?_

_Yes angel, I remember. Yes, that's what it was._

_-x-_

_This is what it was. All our colours blending, trailing a ladder to the stars, sunlight in the meadow, smell of burning leaves, a kaleidoscope of wings. Description will always pale. It becomes hard to believe, after six thousand years of retrospect, that we did not have form back then. Sensation should not have been possible, not in human terms. And yet sensation was. Beauty too – and the memory of what it looked like, how it felt, better still the memory of what each other looked like – the beginning of knowing each other better than ourselves, although perhaps, in what we did, we made those things interchangeable and even though it is inaccurate to say we made love – we made love. _

_Or fucked._

_Somehow this also does not sound inaccurate. Maybe it ought to. But then after all, you were as deep inside me as it was possible to be and I was likewise as buried in you. It should have been unthinkable, but we occupied the same space. For you sank your soul into my soul, I sank my soul into yours and there would never not be a part of you in me or me in you again. Our souls slid together and into each other like a tapestry weaving itself; made out of stardust, made out of feathers. _

_How did we get to this? How do angels ever get to the point of fucking in heaven? Or of love even, passion, of a need to combine what we had, what we were, the stuff we were made of. How long since we had loved by then? Since we had first seen each other and smiled, soul to soul, that glint of recognition in a thousand eyes – _ah, yes, it's you, it will always be you. _Impossible to say, impossible to gauge when time itself was still in such early stages of being. Usually it did not happen at all._

_But it happened._

_You might say we were in a field. The fields of Heaven were endless, and we were endless in them. We could be as large or small as we wanted to be back then, and in our supreme arrogance and innocence we filled all of creation with ourselves entwined, nothing else in all the worlds. Somehow we went from being, talking, blowing stars and new life from our fingertips to touching, feeling, wondering each to the other, wanting. We did, we could, we managed. This is what happens when the night is in love with the day and the day craves the night's touch like lungs need air to breathe. I was the first light of the sun in the morning when the gold is still cool, and you the ghost of the moon only just daring to share the same sky; it would be at those times for the rest of forever that I would always love you, even when I would later try so hard not to. _

_We reached out without words; we were two rivers running into each other to flow together, say one was blue and one was yellow then the water ran in a sparkling green. Because it felt right. Because for all our differences we had to come together like this, _in me, _ I thought, _be always in me _and you said _yes, _my Aziraphale, always and forever yes. My Raphael, I said, always and forever. It was a promise that predated partnership, long before marriage, a promise made by children in the first light of creation but nothing could break it, not ever. We were so perfect, so beautiful, nothing in Heaven, nothing in the world could have touched us._

_Children, yes. Two stars playing at being one, but no sweeter game was ever played. You pressed kisses into my being, stamped yourself into me, your signature on my soul. I was golden with your love, you were glittering with mine, soul caressing soul, every brush of wing tip to wing tip sparking off a thousand simultaneous sighs, winds in the meadow, blowing the new world into shape. We never fully pulled apart, not really._

_That was the secret, the part nobody knew, never even guessed at, not even God who had to have seen. That there would always thereafter be that part of me in you and a part of you in me -_

_-x-_

“Oh - oh _shit – _yeah -” Crowley runs a hand through his hair, already standing up in most directions - “Yeah we did that”.

“Yes.” Aziraphale finds that he can make himself look calmer, almost really _be _calmer with a cup of tea or hot chocolate in front of him, finding the act of cupping hands around it a reassuring one, irrespective of whether or not he ever drinks it – though this time he certainly _will. _Crowley is sat at the small kitchen table opposite, a mug in front of him that he merely looks at from time to time as though it may each time have done something interesting. They moved here from the sofa, the better to talk seriously, Aziraphale now in dressing gown and slippers and Crowley back in a pair of skinny jeans and precious little else. Crowley rolls his head back, cracks his neck with a noise that always makes Aziraphale wince just a little, exhales deeply -

“Holy fuck,” he adds.

“Well – yes -” Aziraphale nods, considering this as a description of the memory in question. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

Crowley drops his head back to a sensible conversational height, finds the slight twitch around the angel's lips and smirks ever so slightly back.

“So,” he says, not wanting to start this conversation one little bit but wanting to have it a very great deal, hoping, in his most cowardly of hearts that the angel is going to put him out of his misery and help.

“So,” Aziraphale echoes, _not _helpfully. “Everything.”

“What?”

“You said you remember everything now.”

“Oh -” he makes an airy gesture as though this is a minor detail and not at least half of the crux of the issue - “Yeah, yeah I guess so.” He hitches in a rather jerky breath, finds himself holding it for a very long time - “All at once,” he says, biting the bullet. “All of it. Just came flooding back when you said – I mean, what you said -”

“Later -” Aziraphale brushes _this _issue aside for the moment – they can only address one part at a time after all.

“That's not what hurt. Not straight away -” Crowley finds himself talking, once he has decided that he both has to and _is, _as quickly as possible to try and get through it all. “Nah, that was – I dunno – my soul trying to leave the body? The body trying to discorporate? I wasn't _ever _meant to remember that stuff, angel, She took it for a reason, didn't she? Fuckin' lousy reason but hers and therefore unarguable. I mean that's not _fair, _is it? Everything should be arguable? But no, we couldn't remember who we were before we fell, it'd melt our brains so that's what that was then – my brains – trying to melt. Ughhh.”

He shudders, it ripples through him like trying to shuck off his skin. He cocks his head to one side, looking at Aziraphale in a new light.

“But you always remembered then, did you?”

“Always. Trust me, the number of times I wished I didn't -”

“Number of times I wished I did. So that first day – on the wall – you remembered me?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't say _anything.”_

“I couldn't – you'd – well – you might have died if -”

“Huh.”

“Besides, I didn't know – well I didn't know how different you'd be, if there was even still anything in you of the angel I remembered -”

“And is there?” He tries to make the question sound casual, just another in a line of so many questions to be asked, but he cannot; so much hinges upon the answer that it is far too much.

“How do you want me to answer that?”

“I dunno – how about honestly? - Jesus angel, you sat on this for six thousand years?”

“I -”

“I don't know what's worse, the fact that you never breathed a word for so long or the fact that you finally bloody did – what did you go and do it for anyway? What the heaven – what the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn't thinking!” Aziraphale splutters – this at least is an easier answer. “I was orgasming! Are you thinking when you come?”

Crowley flops back bonelessly into his chair, waves a hand limply -

“_Touche.”_

He groans, runs a hand slowly down his face, pressing in hard.

“This is – _so much,” _he sighs. “I don't know where to -” he stares at Aziraphale wide eyed across the table, hating what he suspects he has to admit, looking down at his cup, wishing he had kept his glasses on for this.

“I'm scared, Aziraphale,” he confesses in the tiniest voice, which breaks the angel's heart a little, and he reaches out instantly to squeeze Crowley's hand across the table, afraid in turn that it will just be snatched away. It isn't.

“I know,” he says with such infinite gentleness that Crowley finds himself blinking, a lot; “tell me why,” he adds, the inflection almost a question, making it clear that he does not in fact have to.

“So many things,” Crowley mutters, staring now at their hands - “I'm scared it's going to kill me, I'm scared God'll find out and find something else fun to do to me – or you – I'm scared to remember everything – I mean _everything – _still running through how it all started – I don't want to think about -” he shudders again, rippling with it. “You know what I don't want to think about - I'm scared about what it might mean, I'm scared -” he mutters the last few words in a rush, “-reallyscareditmeansyoudon'tloveme.”

“_Crowley -” _Aziraphale says it so sadly that Crowley looks up and his eyes tell the demon what he is going to say and vouch for the truth of it before he even says it - “_Please _don't be afraid of _that _will you? Loving you – it's – well it's like staying alive. I want to and I love it and I need it and that's all there is to it.”

“But – but -” Aziraphale forces himself not to be so harsh as to roll his eyes; trust Crowley to find the _but _for this.

“Evening stroll?” he says, interrupting with startling suddenness.

“Umm – cocoa?”

“Finished.” He turns the mug in Crowley's direction as proof - “Come along dear, walk with me.”

“It's already dark angel – hardly what I'd call _evening.”_

“Night time stroll, then?” His voice says _please, _any minute now Crowley knows he _will_ say please and it will be needy and precious and utterly adorable, he almost waits long enough just to hear it.

“Er yeah, okay then, alright.”

Sometimes he feels rather like a pet in this relationship; albeit a pet who helps its owner into a coat. He doesn't bother; he doesn't usually feel the cold and it's only just a nip anyway, the angel is just being fussy as usual. But somehow it's that ridiculous fussing over him not wearing a coat that convinces him when the words did not that yes, somehow or other he really _is _loved; what he cannot work out is _how, _how when he is what he is and Aziraphale loved what he isn't, _who _he isn't? And he still intends to ask at the next possible opportunity.

__x__

**So I have the next chapter done but I'm away (in the South Downs as luck would have it (hopefully I come back inspired :-P) – for a week as of tomorrow so it will have to wait. Waah. I really haaaate the cliffhanger at the end of the next chapter and I wanted y'all to hate it too but eh it'll wait. :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

“_Raphael!”_

“_Aziraphale! What's wrong?”_

_That's partly it, already; that word – wrong – it had not existed up until what, days ago? Not the days of creation – each of them lasted a lifetime, but normal days maybe, in what would become human terms. And now it did, that was confirmation enough that my fears had some foundation though you -_

_Oh but just to hear my name from you could have convinced me there was nothing wrong, to see your smile and fall into the arms that were always open for me, it was like a scent you exhaled, an aura of reassurance, but no – no I could not fall for it, not this time, the consternation had written lines all over me. _

“_Are you – busy?”_

_It was a rather stiff way of asking the question, and not really what I meant; we were always busy, we were designed to be busy, to help God in Her creations, to be and to do and to construct. No, it meant a lot of other things, things I should not have even been thinking – _am I alright to be talking to you just now? Do you have other places to be? Other people to be with? Is there something on your mind? Do you – in truth – have time for me right now – _oh but that was stupid, it was, couldd an angel be stupid? **I** could. Of course I could – we always had time, we could create it if we wanted to, you especially – if time had a fabric to it, it was a fabric you wove more perfectly than anyone. _

“_Never,” you frowned, of course you did, wondering why I would ask such a question. “Not for you, my Aziraphale, never too busy for you. Now what is it, my dear?” _

My dear. _It is not quite he right phrase to describe what you said, what you called me, but it equates as well as human language can; there are no words for what I was to you, what you were to me, not since we had left a part of ourselves in each other, not when you were as shining to me as you were, you always seemed to glitter with spilt stardust, wings crackling with messy specks of space. But there was a little black glitter in your eyes too these days, beautiful as any oher colour, yes, but it troubled me._

“_Angel -” I said, and the movement I made against you could best be described as a nuzzle, my head against yours; you made it back -_

“_My angel,” - and we rested head to head._

“_Raphael, I'm worried.”_

“_Must be a design flaw,” you said, musingly._

“_What?”_

“_You worry too much, my Aziraphale, I'm sure God didn't mean for us to worry. Not ever.”_

“_You think?” _

_There was something in your voice I didn't like. That had never happened before._

“_This is what's worrying me – when you say things like that -” I stumbled on, afraid but determined - “There's a lot of it going around – this – this -”_

“_This _what _Aziraphale?” You actually sounded irritated with me; oh it hurt, it cut like knives._

“_Uncertainty -” I whispered - “This idea that God could even make – mistakes – I keep hearing -”_

_If I had been in my body then I'd have nibbled my lip, looked downwards. You were looking at me so curiously, not irritated now, thank creation, but patiently, interested and caring._

“_I keep hearing about angels – _questioning _her – about the new plans – this “World” She wants to create, about what we're doing, what we're making, questions about everything -it's – well it's scaring me.”_

“_Why? Don't you think we ought to question? I mean if She made us with the ability to do so, surely we should use it? Why should She be infallible after all? I mean – it's not like She tells us where her plans are ever leading – what does she want us to do, follow blindly? Aziraphale, you've got so many eyes, are you really going to close them all?”_

“_I can't – I mean – oh dear – this is just what I – it's Lucifer, isn't it? Started this? I know you two are close but -”_

“_Close?” you made a terrible face – discorporately speaking - “Aziraphale are you – _jealous?”

“_Jealous? What's that? I don't think so, I'm just worried -”_

“_Yeah. So you _keep _saying. Anyway we're _not _close, we just hang out sometimes – there's only one angel I'm “Close” to Aziraphale, and that's you. I love you.”_

_Oh, those words, they still sounded so new! So rare – love was in abundance of course, we were angels, but nobody ever said _that – _not to one thing or entity in particular, even though I knew, it was still always wonderful (I might shyly have thought _miraculous _but only to myself) – to hear it._

“_I love you. That's not the – oh I remember – jealous – that's what they said Lucifer was – that he thought God would love the new creations more than him – is that it?”_

“_Something like. Between ourselves I think Lucifer and God -”_

“_Don't you dare!” I had to stop you saying it, if only because I had had the thought too, unthinkable though it should have been. You looked at me and it was clear you knew I knew. _

“_This is going to get us in trouble!”_

“_Trouble?” You scoffed, the first scoff in creation - “What can God do? She can't punish us – what would She do? And why for goodness sake – just for asking questions?”_

“_There's talk -” I whispered, we were so close now, curled up in a cocoon of our wings, the gentle rustling all around like being in a nest, shivering through our beings with warm fizzing crackles- “Amongst the others – Gabriel, Michael – the ones closest to God – I mean the ones who _aren't _the Morningstar – they're calling it -” I floundered a little over the new word - “Rebellion.”_

“_Rebellion? What's that?”_

“_Well – they say that Lucifer and some of the others – the ones who ask questions, that you want to overthrow God, that you're dangerous and need to be stopped – they say there's going to be a _war -_that's when everybody fights – it sounds awful- Raphael promise me -” this was it, this was what I really wanted to say from the start- “promise me that if that happens we won't be on opposite sides. I couldn't bear it.”_

“_My Aziraphale -” you closed your wings around me tenderly, it felt so safe that I believed you - “It won't come to that.”_

_It was only some time later that it occurred to me that you had not given me the promise I had asked for._

_-x-_

There is a brief moment when the argument over whether to take the beach path or the cliff path almost turns loaded; it is Crowley who accidentally saves it -

“What do you mean “We'll have to take one each”? What is this, like a Scottish folk song – you take the high road I'll take the bloody low road?”

For a moment Aziraphale pouts at him but then he gives a little _harrumph _of a laugh and shrugs -

“Oh alright, we'll both go the beach path.”

“Yeah, I should hope so – bloody romantic night time stroll that'd be otherwise, wouldn't it? – oh, I say, hello up there old chap, what'll I do? Give you a wave? You know, you're cute when you pout?”

“I am not -”

“Oh you _are!”_

“Yes, well I -”

“Ah shuddup angel, walk with me now under the stars, eh? Well clouds anyway - it's not very – oh, okay, _one, _one star.”

“One of yours?” Aziraphale finds him asking shyly, slipping his hand into his like they have only just started discreetly walking out together, like some eighteenth century courting couple.

“Naaah. Didn't go in for the bright flash ones me, led to no end of trouble them ones, y'know – moving about all over the place leading wise men a merry dance -”

“Oh that – you know that wasn't a star, that was Gabriel with a really big torch.”

“Huh, figures. Never heard of a star doing _that.”_

They walk in silence for a few minutes, mostly companionable, slightly strained by the awareness of conversation to come and everything else. Beyond the path the waves gently clatter against the sand, the sound magnified by night and the absense of all other noise, just gentle fingers clutching in and out pulling at the shells and shingle then throwing them back up out of childish hands.

“Alright angel,” Crowley starts, when he feels he has given it long enough. “There a reason for asking me out here? Like – trying to avoid the conversation? I thought you _wanted _to talk this all out.”

“Oh I do – I really do – honestly – it's been awful – I'm sorry, I don't mean to – I know you couldn't, I don't want to – well, but. No, it's just – you said it was too much, too hard to do all at once, so I thought maybe a change of scene and air – some nice – background noise to -”

“To what? Put me at _ease? _Lull me like a baby in a hammock?”

“Oh, I don't think babies sleep in -”

“Angel. The point -” he gestures with two hands wildly apart - “You. I'm going through a bloody existential identity crisis, angel, not having a sleepless case of wind. Next you'll be playing me whale song.”

“Oh – would that, ah – help?”

“Six thousand years, angel. I'd have thought you were better at sarcasm.”

“Look, I just thought – there's so much to talk about. We shouldn't even _try _to do it all at once, it'll take – well_ days, _at the very least, I mean who knows -”

“Oh good. Great. Glad you give my crisis here _days.”_

“Crowley!”

“Sorry angel, it's just hard to feel the full force of loss and God's extreme fucking over of me constantly and painfully all the time, okay?”

“I know! That's precisely why I said we should – you know – split it up a bit – engage in a bit of light banter – walk under the – star,” he finishes lamely.

“How?” Crowley almost vomits the question out.

“Excuse me?”

“_How _do you still love me? After how much I've changed – _we've _changed. I was an angel, as you never cease to remind me, now I know you loved that angel, how can I ever believe you love me? I was – _he _was – well, nothing like me, beautiful, radiant, shining – I remember angel, I _remember _you calling me those things, I remember how your love felt, like nothing else I can remember. I don't think you can begin to imagine how it felt to lose that, to have it peeled away from me like layers of skin, I remember _that – _unpeeling like an apple as I fell – I'd rather it _had _been skin. What? What are you thinking?”

“I suppose -” Aziraphale says slowly, they have stopped now, sat down on a rickety bench with the names of two people who “Loved this view as they loved each other” on a small bronze plaque at their backs.

“I suppose everyone changes as they grow. Humans – well, we see it all the time -”

“Hardly the same as being a different species, angel. You should no more care for me than a dog, let alone -”

“Maybe I'm -” Aziraphale's lips purse in the way that tells Crowley he's about to say something awful, “- _kinky”. _He does.

“Aziraphale!”

“Anyway, I don't see that it _is _so very different. Do you know every cell in the human body regenerates within seven years? That means that not a bit of them is the same as it was seven years before. But people stay married for decades, they love each other whole lifetimes, even though they're different people by the end of that time than they were when they began. And that's just the science of it. Look at how people change, even after just a few years – someone who's say in their early twenties is going to think of themselves five years before at seventeen, eighteen and think, _Oh my golly gracious, was that really me?”_

“I _really _don't think they're going to think _Oh my golly gracious_-”

“Crowley dear, I love you, do stop interrupting. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is – if humans can still love someone who's changed so much over such a little space of time, why in the world shouldn't I still love you?”

“Angel – demon – and that's just me? I don't know, I don't know – _look, _I know how stupid it is but it feels like you loved someone before me and that I just can't compete with them, and I _hate _the bastard for knowing you first.”

“You can't – _compete _with yourself, Crowley.”

“Watch me.”

“Look, I was scared too. That first time on the wall? I could hardly look at you for fear -”

“Oh is _that _what it was.”

“Because it was _you –_ I knew it was, I could feel you approach from all across the garden and I thought it might break me – seeing you but not you at all – I didn't want to see the demon you'd become, they all said – I mean God said – and the others – they said you'd all been changed completely, nothing of the who you used to be left – well, but as soon as you spoke to me I knew that wasn't true, and when I saw you – well – all I could feel was _hope –_ hope and and and and _oh, there you are.”_

“Huh. I felt that too – that _oh it's you _feeling – didn't make sense to me at the time, I just thought I'd fallen in love right there. It was the same for you?”

“Well not the same, but -”

“Gaaaaah!” Crowley yells, kicking pebbles - “Six thousand years, angel! Six thousand years and I thought it was hopeless, that I was, aww I dunno – _wrong –_ twisted – and more than demon twisted but utterly fucked – I shouldn't have been feeling bloody bastard _love, _least of all for a bloody bastard angel – no offence -”

“None taken.”

“And there you were, loving me all the time like a a – an idiot! Why didn't you _say?”_

“Do you want the long list or the -”

“No actually, spare me any list. You're saying I don't even _look _different?”

“No, of course you look different. I mean the wings – and the eyes – but they were still your wings, but darker, still your eyes when you looked at me – I still -” he blushes, grateful for the dark. “I still looked at you and saw galaxies in those eyes.”

“Hah.”

“Don't “Hah” me. It's true. I wasn't six thousand years late in loving you, just six thousand years late in picking a side.”

“Come again?”

“Remember when I warned you – I mean about the war and about – who you were friends with – and I asked you not to pick the wrong side?”

“Ah.”

“I was slow. It should have been me picking your side. I should have fallen when you did, I knew that when they made us watch -”

“They made you _watch?”_

“Oh. Yes. I don't think I can – I mean -”

“Talk about that? Yet. No I don't think so either. And don't, you mustn't say that, you mustn't say that ever. I could bear falling, but I don't think I could bear it if you -”

“Oh. Oh God.” Aziraphale feels more than a little bit sick, the way the memory hits, when he looks at Crowley he can see it nauseatingly in his eyes too.

“Oh God.”

They look at each other, stricken.

“That's what you said -”

“Yup -”

“That's _exactly _what I said.”

“During the -”

“Oh God we're gonna talk about this, aren't we?”

“-war in Heaven. Yes, I rather think we are.”

__x__


	7. Chapter 7

_ **7.** _

“_It won't come to that,” you said. There was a part of me that believed it, right up until it was happening, when the skies were filled with clamour and cacophony and the sound of angels screaming and dying._

_It is hardly possible to put into words, hardly possible to describe in human terms. No depiction could do it justice, though “Justice” was hardly a word to be applied to the situation. All of a sudden we were more physical than we had ever been before, physical enough to bleed and crumple, hurt and die. The weapons God gave us, the weapons Lucifer had forged – they were such as could take down a non – corporeal entity, such as could cause pain. For the first time we knew these things; pain and death, fear and suffering. All because some of us had questioned God's plans. _

_There's nothing She could do, you said. She cannot punish us, you said, we cannot suffer, cannot bleed or die or break. Oh my dear. What babies we were._

_All of a sudden the war was upon us, all of a sudden we were fitted out for battle. All of a sudden we went from creators to destroyers, from working in harmony to trying to destroy each other. I had not even realised I had picked a side until I was on it._

_It was the wrong one, it was the wrong one, it was the wrong one. _

_I wonder if any of us knew how we got here, how we went one moment from creating little creatures, fashioning plants and stars, land mass and seas – went from the gentle steady song of creation to the jarring discord of war. It seemed as though there came a moment when we all turned round and saw the Other Place God had been working on behind our backs; how we all saw it and shuddered. For the first time all the angles of creation seemed wrong, and the depth of this place made us all shake, the angle of the fall into that pit made us all temporarily shiver and sway, the smell and the heat of that place, just to look down made us dizzy, made us feel like we were already sliding sickeningly that way. We all saw how God looked that way and smiled, how Lucifer looked that way and wept. Just for a second. Then it was that there was the Morningstar's own tear in God's eye, her own smile transferring to his face as he looked down for a second time and nodded once. _Mine, _that nod said. He was the first of us to know. It was then that sides were chosen; that some of us cried out in horror at the creation of Hell, and some of us stayed silent._

_The worst of us stayed silent; the greatest fighters, and the greatest cowards. They handed the cowards swords because they knew we would need them the most. By then it was already too late to change sides. I would have, I would have, I would have – wouldn't I? The moment it was in my hand I wanted to throw it away from me like poison; a weapon that could cut even an angel in two, but it felt as though it was welded to my hand, glued there with cowardice and fear._

_This is what I saw when the fighting broke out. Swords cut great gashes in the sky, gashes that would never heal, rips in the fabric of reality that would never close; there would be humans throughout their history that would see them and go a little mad. I saw the fields of Heaven laid to waste, transformed into a battleground, grass turned to rubble, flowers turned to ash and the skies were on fire. I saw a sky full of wings, in shades of white and gold and red, wings beating and pounding the air through an afternoon that lasted for years, wings that tore and scattered, breaking from our backs. We all felt the pain of every one of us who was broken, torn apart in that fight. I saw angel turn on angel, our love turned into savagery, into a newly God-given instinct to smite and rend and maim._

_Here is what I saw. I saw angels fall ecstatically into the fight. I saw battle fury painted as beauty on the faces of the most righteous. I saw Sandalphon smite and smite and smite, breaking the other side apart like shells, smashing the cases of their existence into nothing. I saw him smile as he would smile later in a field made of salt. I saw Gabriel wield his sword in arcs that severed limbs, cutting swathes through the enemy until he broke the blade upon Lucifer himself. I saw God herself elbow Gabriel aside to take that fight from him. I saw angels turned wild, gleeful and awful with the joy of the fight. _

_Here is what I heard. The cries of the injured, the shrieks of the dying. I heard the riot and thunder, the brutal drumbeat of wings that beat the air to broken shards. Here is what I could smell on the air; the blood of celestial beings, petrichor and ozone. The smell of Heaven gone wrong, sulphur and fumes reeking up from the pit below. _

_And what I felt. Oh. I felt small for the first time, lost for the first time, alone on the battlefield, in a writhing sea of everyone I had ever known and never known murdering each other. Over questions. I was scared. I was so scared. I held that sword in front of me to ward off attack, pain, threat, holding it so gently so as to never even cut another being._

_Here is what I saw when a path lay in front of me through the mess and the chaos, the contortion of bodies in fight. I saw you, my Raphael, bearing down on me through the smoke and the dust, eyes bright, almost red in the dying light, wing tips black with smoke and poised to pounce, a falcon in the dive bent upon me._

“_Aziraphale,” you said; the most terrible growl, most menacing of sounds. Your whole face shuddered with the force of your sneer, twitched with your disdain. Every particle, every motion and flex of you snarled at me; I saw the accusation –_ Enemy – _in your eyes, and for the first time I felt the anger that seethed all around me, felt it right through me. For a moment, for that long moment I was furious, hated you, believed the accusation, felt it.Most of all the fury; an irrational rage that you had let this happen when you had promised me – hadn't you?- that it would not come to this._

_You hadn't. You had not promised a thing. Realisation did not make it better._

“_Raphael.” I felt my own lip twitch, heard the word drop from me like a dead monstrosity from my mouth. That word, wherein all my hope and love and delight had been planted. That exchange of words; the first we ever made and some of the last. I felt like I was carved in stone; the only living thing about me blazing in my hand. I looked at the sword for the very first time._

“_You really gonna use that thing? Are you going to kill me, my Aziraphale?”_

_I broke into pieces. It was the way you tried to spit - sneer the word _My – _but instead your voice wobbled, your eyes and mouth twitched and cracked, the memory of every time you said it in love seeped through and you just stared at me and I stared at you, poised on the field and ready to fight. It was then that I realised that the only cowardice came in the taking up of arms and the sword dropped from between my fingers like sand. You looked down at the sword like you hated it, then back at me with a face I could not read. It hurt so much to not be able to; I always could before._

“_Pick it up,” you said and your voice was so cold._

“_What? No.”_

“_Pick it up,” you repeated, harsh - “Fight me.”_

“_I will not”. I never could sound impressive, stubborn defiance just came out sounding petulent. You looked – you looked like you were going to cry._

“_Fight me. You have to.”_

“_I _don't _have to. I didn't want this. We didn't have time – I didn't know – I chose the wrong -”_

_You were on me before I could go on, twisting my arm behind my back, hand slapped hard over my mouth._

“_Shut up. Shut up now. You can't say that. You can't ever say that. Promise me. Promise me you'll never say that.”_

_You moved your hand away cautiously._

“_What? No – why?”_

“_Listen -” You leant in close, hissing the words violently into my ear, sibillant syllables slipping out like steam, though your breath on my cheek was soft and your nose just slightly brushed against my neck as though tenderness were impossible to help, even now - “Listen we're losing – my side – look around – we're going to lose, it's obvious – there's no hope for us, no hope for me, we're gonna fall – all the way down there -” My eyes followed yours without you having to tell me where you were looking - “- and that's – I can bear it, my Aziraphale, I can, I can, I can – but I couldn't bear it if you were to fall, not for a second, you have to promise me -”_

“_No!”_

_You twisted my arm behind me enough to hurt._

“_Promise me you won't say a word. You won't try to stop this, you won't try to follow me. You won't question Her, not ever Aziraphale, please – for me. Now try to break away -”_

“_She's not watching.”_

“_She sees everything. Do it.”_

_You let me twist out of your grip. You knew exactly what you were doing and I simply let you. You twisted back, took my head between your hands as if you were going to crush it, I took your head in mine and there we were, locked in every semblance of a fight. You pressed your forehead to mine as though you would sink into me if you could and I could feel, even in the awfulness of this moment, how much you still wanted that, wanted me; feel it like I had never felt it before, urgent and vicious and desperate._

“_Promise me,” you said again._

“_I can't” - we made it look like a mutual attemt to kill but I was holding onto you because I did not want to ever let go, could not let you go, not into that place where you would not let me follow. _

“_Please. Please angel, I'm begging you – I would break Heaven if they hurt so much as a feather of you. Promise me you'll stay safe. I need you to stay safe.”_

“_I – promise”._

“_Thank creation. Now push me. Kick my legs out and put your foot on the back of my neck. I love you.”_

“_I love you.”_

_I thought I would weep the heart right out of my chest, but I did as you said._

_-x-_

“It's still true,” Crowley says. He cannot look at Aziraphale when he says it, walking down the beach to where the sand is softest, looking down at the spill of the sea creeping up towards his toes - “I _would _break Heaven if they hurt you, drown Hell in holy water if it threatened you. I would let the Earth burn before I let anything happen to you. I'm not -”

He takes a deep breath he does not really need; it starts out as a groan, even as the sea swells and crashes out of him in a terrified _eeeeeee _that is mercifully almost entirely crushed down by the crash of the next wave.

Aziraphale bends down a little behind him to roll his trouser legs up against the salt water, wondering as he does so if he should speak into the pause. If he should even begin to say what it has been like sitting on these memories for six thousand years, hating himself for keeping his promise.

“I'm not -” Crowley tries again; Aziraphale now beside him in the bubbling foam - “I remember -” he tries again - “- loving you. How it felt. Felt the same. All this time I hung on to how different we were, me and him – I had to, to know who I was – to be the demon I had to be, I guess – but we're not, we're the same aren't we? You always knew that, didn't you?”

He turns a beseeching face towards Aziraphale, one that begs for help, for him to say the right thing and his insides flutter and churn for not knowing what that is.Crowley sees it, almost feels it and helps.

“My Aziraphale,” he says, reaching out a hand to cup his face. Aziraphale places his hand over it and knows exactly what to say; what a part of him has wanted to say every day since that last terrible fight;

“My Raphael.”

Crowley closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out.

“Raphael,” he says, and his tongue crackles but does not burn - “Yeah,” he nods, makes a short hmming sound - “Yeah, okay.”

__x__

**Please do not assume that this is Crowley deciding he really _is _Raphael – he still has the longest way to go on this identity trip :-) Please, join us next chapter for The Fall ™ :-)**

**In today's anecdotes – I started writing this yesterday but half way through my brain started singing the “see you on the other side of the war” line from _Hamilton _repeatedly and I had to stop before I actually wrote the line “My first friend my enemy” in there somewhere. So I finished it today instead. :-)**


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

It's a warm September night on a beach in the south of England, and an angel and a demon walk up it hand in hand as though they have just emerged from the sea. You might not know it if you saw them, but their hands really are held very tightly together, clutching one to the other as though they need it to balance. And they do.

“The worst thing about falling -” the demon says, foolhardy on the wings of his newest discovery, enough to think he can actually say this out loud. His tongue practically crashes against his teeth as they bite back on the awfulness of the worst thing about falling.

-x-

_The worst thing of all – but perhaps not, perhaps it is selfish to say it – was that She made us all watch. When the battle was over, She rounded up the renegades and drove them to the edge of the cliffs of Heaven. _

_Heaven had never _had _cliffs before. Oh, She had been busy. Oh how I hated her. I had never hated anything before, and it burned hotter than the sword I never wanted to see again. But I loved her, She made us, She made it all, I had to love her, didn't I? But you had told me not to question and I had promised, I could not question, not even inside my own head. _

_You were so scared, so pitiful, the tattered group of renegade survivors on the edge of Heaven, and we had been given no choice but to beat you back towards that edge, the wings of thousands of angels sending up a storm to push you back and back and back. I was there, somewhere in the back, following helplessly with the others who regretted it, who did not want to be there. But we had no choice. We were given no choice and I knew that it was true, what Lucifer had said and feared – that God would love the Humans more than us because they at least would be given free will._

_But what was God's love at all, I wondered, when She loved you all still and did this all the same. So many of you begged for Her mercy, trusted in Her mercy, even up to the last. I could see angels all around smiling, nodding, approving the sight of the renegades on their knees, cowering in fear before the Wrath of God, hands clasped in pitiful prayer. I looked around me and felt so out of place. I felt like you felt – like She could not possibly _really _do this, not Our Loving God. I still felt the foulest worm of hope wriggling in me – that any minute now, this would all stop and none of what had brought us here might have happened. I was still sick with that hope when She stepped out from usand spoke to you._

“_You know what you've done,” She said, hands clasped patiently, sadly before her, her wrath calm and quiet and excrutiating. “You've disappointed me. Now this is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.”_

_It was a lie. We could all feel it, the moment that God first lied, lied barefacedly in front of us all. It was _not _going to hurt Her more; what I could not believe is how none of the angels on my side betrayed any surprise or sense of this betrayal – but then of course neither did I. I could have been a stone depiction of an angel for all I showed to her. _

“_Come here,” She said, and such was always Her power that every one of us there, those She called True and those she called renegade, felt as though she was talking to them personally, but it was Lucifer who stepped forward, dragging a broken wing and on two broken feet, but standing defiantly in spite of it all, halo broken and jutting out around his head in horns. Nobody heard what She said to him there, so close she leant in, but we all saw Her kiss his cheek with a lost look in Her eye. There were demons who would say that this was the moment God went mad._

_Then she stood back, and looking past Lucifer She blew ever so gently in his direction; Her breath was a hurricane with a scream caught up inside, a terrible screeching sound like whale song ripping down a blackboard that made every angel there cover their ears. Every one but Lucifer. That storm sent him tumbling over the cliff edge; of course, he was the first to fall. We all heard his screams as he went down, none of us bearing to look but we looked because we could not tear our eyes away. _

_After that there was no more wailing, no more crying, no more angels on their knees before God. You were silent, still, patient even as one by one God let out Her breath again to send one after the other over that terrible high and broken edge of Heaven. As it went on we realised we could hear the sulphar pits fizzing and crackling, sending up the reek of burning angel wings._

_One by one we realised on our side that the angels were not dying when they fell; the feel and the scent of suffering was too strong. Like a slow torture we realised we could feel life at the end of the fall, blackened, twisted terrible life; angels twised into grotesque shapes, terrible parodies of what they once were. Some of us shuddered to imagine it, one of us wept. _

_One by one you stepped forward, calm and with courage and grace. Yes Grace. You faced God in those final moments with nobility and honour, in those final moments before the fall, every single one of you outshone all those left behind. I felt like a blackened, twisted thing myself for doing nothing to stop this._

Do not.

_I heard your voice when you stepped forward, eyes fixed on God, mind directed only at me. We were not telepathic but you spoke to me thus all the same._

Not one move - you promised.

_I tried to make words back but all my mind could do was cry on you._

You're beautiful – _I could feel your mind glow, even at that point, with how completely you thought it – _Stay beautiful, my Aziraphale. I _will _see you again. Wherever you are I _will _find you – oh -

_I could feel it – your mind scrabbling to make more time even as God, watching you curiously, parted Her lips in that terrible goodbye kiss. I could feel it all – your fear, your determination not to show it – love for God, even now, love for me above all things – _Oh – _I heard the shock of all that time running out from you again – _Goodbye, my angel, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye -

_Then, and only then, did you look at God, and to the astonishment of a thousand watching angels you raised one shoulder and actually smirked. You opened your mouth but before you could speak you were blown back and as you fell I felt the link sever – felt it cut – perhaps on purpose so I could not feel the rest._

  
  


_You fell you fell you fell -_

  
  


_I thought my heart would never stop screaming._

  
  


_When it was done, when the very last had fallen, we scattered to the corners of Heaven to begin repairs, some injured from the fight, others shuffling away ashamed and obedient. I stood at the precipice and stared down as if hoping my eyes could pierce the gloom that had settled over those furnaces. There was nothing but dark smoke and a dull red glow. Nothing but sorrow._

  
  


“_Aziraphale.” _

  
  


_I was struck with dread. I had never heard Her approach, one never does I suppose, since She is always there. I turned my head cautiously and there She was, standing right beside me, hands still clasped in front of Her as though all was well. She looked so peaceful. She was Peace itself. I wanted to hate Her, I did hate Her, I could not hate Her. The air She exuded was fragrant with Love. I loved Her and I hated loving Her and I hated hating Her. There was no choice but to love Her, every fibre of Her being insisted silently upon that fact; it demanded it. _

  
  


_And She was so gentle. So caring. So kind. Her voice so sweet._

  
  


“_My Aziraphale -”_

  
  


_That broke the spell,at least for a moment. I had no idea if She said it only in the way She always said it, as She called all of Her angels “Mine”. She had made us after all, She was our creator, our parent and She was never going to let us forget that fact. She said it with such tenderness it always made the heart flare with pleasant warmth, so hard, so hard to fight against that flare and resent Her for Her possessiveness._

  
  


_And yet easier now, since I was not Hers, though She could not know it. Could She? I wanted to snarl for hearing those words from any other voice than yours.Her tenderness made my insides squirm._

  
  


“_My Aziraphale, why are you crying?”_

  
  


_If we had not been standing on the edge of the cliffs of Heaven, I would still have felt myself on the most precarious precipce with that question wobbling like a tightrope underneath me. It was impossible to tell with God, which answer was the right one – or at least now – which answer would be safest. I chose to linger on my reply, frown as though I was not quite sure myself. There was something slightly sly in Her eye when She looked my way again, sly and helpful all at once._

  
  


“_I understand. It _is _sad. The saddest day we have yet seen. You are crying for the Fallen, are you not?”_

  
  


_If it was a trap I fell straight into it. When The Almighty tells you They Understand it is not possible to doubt that She must._

  
  


“_Yes – yes Lord – it is a – tragedy, Lord – to lose them -”_

  
  


_If God could raise an eyebrow, then She did._

  
  


“_Of course,” She said, nodding ever so slightly, voice frighteningly neutral. I was terrified She could tell I was terrified. It was all I could do to stay still, shaking only on the inside. “Of course -” She said - “The tragedy could be as well said to be that they have lost Me.”_

  
  


_I hoped She would see my stricken face as horror at the very thought._

  
  


“_Of course -” She added, so very casually - “You are weeping for them all, are you not Aziraphale? No one more than any other?”_

  
  


_She had to know, She had to know -_

  
  


“_No Lord. Of course not.”_

  
  


“_No -” She said mildly, and Her gaze seemed to pierce right through to the core of me, every fragment of my being turned over and perused and I felt – not entirely censure but sympathy and perhaps a curious calculating satisfacion, as though She was nodding to herself at the Rightness of what She found in me._

  
  


“_No -” She said and the tear I saw sparkling like a star on Her cheek would confuse me for the rest of my life - “No, nor I.”_

_-x-_

  
  


“The worst thing about falling -” Crowley says - “If we have to talk about it – well, the worst thing was losing your love.”

  
  


“You never -”

“No I never did – you – well I know that now, don't I, you numpty?” _Numpty, _he thinks, _Hell help me we've only been living together a few months, give me a year and I'll be tickety fucking boo - _

“- but I didn't know that then,” he carries on, face darkening - “I don't think I was s'posed to know it then. It felt like your love, _all _love, everything bright and good I'd ever known, ever been was being peeled away from me like – peeling an apple. Like – if you took a knife to me and did my skin in one long peel – that's how it felt – ugh that's it, I'm never eating another apple again -”

He shudders. “Ugh. Anyway. I felt it scraped from my flesh, gouged out of my soul, everything light, everything beautiful and pure and you – oh angel, I had so much to lose. You were the purest, the most beautiful. You always were. Fell forever, down and down and down, that was the wort part, worst than the landing and boiling sulphur -” he makes a face, can almost taste it on his tongue - “- it's no picnic, I can tell you. But it was the falling – the falling that hollowed us out. Left us empty, just darkness and evil around us in the pit to fill up the gap where goodness was. I missed it -” he sighs, stops walking, looks down at the sand.

“Some of us didn't. Too hung up on how awful goodness was, they welcomed the loss of it, let the darkness fill them up completely. I couldn't. Goodness was – meh – it was meh – but what was so great about plain darkness? Besides there was one thing She couldn't burn out of me, wasn't there? That little part of me that was you. And when they sent us up to Earth I just let the empty spaces get full of everything – evil, good, all the in between stuff, and you – straight after Eden there you were. I always wondered what it meant – that part of me that – I dunno – _recognised _you -”

“All of it?” Aziraphale looks stricken.

“What?”

“All my love – every memory – gone?”

“Every good thing angel, everything that made me _him – _Raphael – I can't _be _him again, you know, even if I can -”

“I know. I don't want you to.”

“You don't?”

“I didn't have to start all over again, of course, but I knew that first day that I still loved you, whoever you were – when you told me you'd changed your name it felt like – this isn't very eloquent, oh dear – but it felt like, _ah yes there you are. _I love _you_ – Crowley. Whatever your name is, whatever you are – I always did. I think – even before the fall I was always going to. Only -”

“Only what, angel?

“Well I'm sorry – I know you won't want me to say it – but it sounds so painful – I hate to think of you suffering – that fall – I am so sorry my dear, so very sorry.”

“You don't have to be. You're about the only thing of Heaven that doesn't.”

“But I am.”

“All this time -” Crowley swallows, it feels like something stuck in his throat - “All this time I didn't even think you _liked _me -”

“You know I _had _to say that.”

“You didn't.”

“I _did.”_

“Whatever. Six thousand years. All this time feeling like I'd lost something because you didn't love me. Wishing and waiting and bloody well stupid hoping, it was like -” and he's crying, the lump in the throat breaking from him in a flood down his face, streaming tears - “- falling -” he gulps - “it was like I was still falling – all this time, I never stopped – I never stopped -” his legs feel like water from the memory of all that tumbling down, the dizzy seconds of losing your balance, feeling sick as you tumble with nothing to clutch onto as you go down – that momentary panic spiralling out over centuries of freefalling, dizzyingly gruesomely down through the darkness with the wind roaring and the blood between the ears, horrified in agony every second of the way – the legs buckle from under him, and he goes down, always always down. But the expectation of hitting damp sand never plays out; he lands in arms both soft and startlingly strong, lands to find himself cradled in the lap of angel, whose eyes smile down at him beatifically, while his lip wobbles in sympathy. The demon lets himself be gathered close, as Aziraphale lets his own knees deal with the damp sand, forgetting that only minutes ago he was rolling his trouser legs up to save them from salt water. He gathers his demon to his chest as though Crowley is made of a hundred thousand flower petals that he has scattered and is trying to hold all together protectively against him.

“Not falling now,” he murmurs, kissing his forehead, stroking his hair, rocking him ever so slightly - “I've you you my dear, I've got you.”

__x__

**I have had this end-to-a-chapter in my head for weeeeeks – I wanted it for the end of the last chapter i'd been so desperate to write it – but it didn't work there so finally. Dun that. Don't thank me. :-)**


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

_I _did_ have to keep saying it – that we weren't friends. One of us, at least, had to have some sort of survival instinct, and it quite clearly was not going to be you. _

_After the Fall, everything changed in Heaven. After a spate of angels going mad and suicidal, the cliff edge was blocked off, the hole where the entrance to Hell was boarded over with unshiftable matter. One could look out over the edge of Heaven and see only cloud, an impenetrable ominous cloud which seemed to say to us all that there was once a hole here, but now it was gone. _Mended, _God would tell us, though She would never say if it would ever be opened again. We could none of us be the innocents we once were after that, none of us go back to what we had been before the war. Many of us did not even want to; they talked about Moving On and Progress and The New Way of Things. Coupled with the Newest Plan to begin re-fashioning the fields of Heaven – now a smoking ruin of a battleground – into an Office Complex – whatever that was – it was the beginning of the Beaurocracy that Heaven became._

_And if any of us did not like The New Way we most certainly knew better than to even think about saying so. The battlefield itself was never cleared, rather there was a room built for it in the new complex, the whole of the war preserved inside that room, the bodies of the fallen preserved there forever for all to see, some kind of foul memorial of, a place to go to remember everything we did not want to happen again._

_Most of us. Some angels visited That Room frequently to bask in what they considered a past glory, Sandalphon was there every day . For the rest of us – we were scheduled Compulsory Memorial Time once every seventh day, Lest We Forget, God said. She described it as respect for the Fallen – She did not say if She meant those who had perished on our side or the fallen Fallen and nobody ever asked. She said that, but to those of us that hated the memory it was a form of weekly torture. _

_As if we could have forgotten. Even with the war over it seemed that we were all fighters now, arranged and arrayed like battalions, ever ready to do battle again; as with everything else, none of us dared ask with whom or over what, we simply awaited orders like good soldiers. There was no more Creation for any of us now, just God in the Garden She was planting, sealed off from us all. In a way, we had all of us been cast out. _

_And what we felt -_

_I cannot speak for Heaven, I can barely speak for myself because there was nothing left to feel, no room for reaction in the half a heart I had been left. Who knew how many more broken angels there were, hiding behind the facade of righteousness, functioning purely on obedience and duty, completely and utterly subject to God's will. The truth was there was not even half of me left without you. _

_The mockery that had been made of Heaven was barely tolerable, but tolerate it we did, if only because we could not die. Death lingered in the room he had started out in, trapped behind the door in a corridor painted green, as much a prisoner to this place as we all were._

_But then there was nowhere else to go._

_Until one day._

_God alone knew how long it had been before she summoned us; just a small group of Archangels and Principalities to meet her in the Garden behind the door. Everything was hidden away behind dorrs these days. The one that led to the Garden was green and blue and swirling, and without a doubt forbidden right up until that day. _

_We stumbled blinking into the green and golden light of that place, taking in two immense things at the same time._

_The first thing was that we had bodies. God explained it to us there and then, beaming in pride at her own brilliance and the Creation all around her. We were truly physical for the first time and the sensations suddenly available were overwhelming – some of us shrank from ourselves in fear but I felt – _right –_ in a way I had thought I might never feel again, I wanted to be alone with myself to take all of it in._

_There was so very much to take in. Even beyond the miracle of my own self, there were the colours and sounds and shapes, the smells all aroudn us and the way things felt to the touch. For a moment, nowhere near long enough, God let us wander and take it all in. We touched leaves and grass and fruit, felt water and air for the very first time, every single thing a miracle. Here too we saw the animals we had made when we were happy, so many of my own creations here I felt my new heart swell with joy and there was water in my new eyes as I saw the birds fly overhead – when I reached out a hand and the tiniest of wrens landed in my palm, I cried from human eyes for the first time and could not look at that little creature enough. The joy – the pain – the breaking of my heart – it made me feel as though I could start to feel again. _

_Finally God had to tell me to put the wren down and join Her with the others. _

_She told us that this was the Beginning, that the very next day She would be placing the first humans in this Garden She had called Eden and that we four – She gestured - were to guard it and guard them, one at each gate. For the first time since before the war I loved Her again – I had forgotten almost what it felt like. To be spared the mediocrity of Heaven and be graced with this wondrous place on Earth! It was almost too much happiness. But if I thanked Her too profusely for this honour, She did not seem to notice. _

_Then one of us asked what we were gaurding the Garden from. Her answer was twofold. Nothing was to get in and nothing was to go out. Nobody asked _why. _One did not ask God why, not ever. One of us however asked what? From what were we guarding, because what else was there? She told us then that Lucifer still worked against Her – this was news to us, we had heard nothing of the fallen and we had not asked. She told us then that he and his demons would seek to damage this perfect place, to sully the new humans with knowledge and she showed us the tree they were not to touch; the most beautiful tree in the garden, glimmering gold in the new sunshine, its leaves rustling and sparkling, the fruit gleaming like gemstones._

_For the first time, questions rose up in me. A song, a river, a fountain of questions, as though all of the doubt and wonder and suspicion I had suppressed had come uncorked. Questions flying up like birds from a cage long locked. Why put the tree here at all? What was wrong with knowledge? Why was there an outside to the garden if nobody was to go there? What more of the World – as it was called – was there going to be? And what was in it? Oh the endless endless questions I could not ask. But I did ask one – nervously but to my great relief there were others of us nodding – wondering the same -_

“_What's a _demon?”

“_The Fallen,” She replied, and we none of us could hide our surprise - “That's what they call themselves now, they are our enemy now as ever they were in Heaven, a terrible foe, my angels – one it will always be our job and our duty to crush; they will always seek to ruin my plans and mar our creations, they weill not allow beauty such as I have created here to go unspoiled for long. Trust me my angels, be vigilant and always on the look out, for they will scheme and conive by all means to destroy us.”_

_Oh the questions, the endless questions – how did She know? How did the demons know of us? What did they know of God's plans? What, for that matter, did any of us know? Why did She have to always be so ineffable? What were demons like? What did they look like? How did they live? How did they feel, think, act? Was there anything left in them of the angels they had been? The angels we remembered even? Was there – oh was there? _

_And then there was the question of you – you – always you -_

_Oh I had to stop, had to stop thinking, stop wondering, it was too much. And I suspect that She meant the prospect to frighten not excite us. _

“_Aziraphale!” _

_I only jumped on the inside, but the fear was Great. I wondered how I could dare ignore God, though with it came a definite low down tickle of spiteful satisfaction that I had done so. She looked at me for a long time and I wonder if She felt me quake; eventually She simply pressed her lips together and handed me my hated sword for the second time._

“_I'll be watching you,” She said and then She sent us in our four directions – to North and South, to West, and finally East. Then She gathered Her archangels to Her and left us._

_How long I guarded that gate I will never quite know; days were still not the same as now, they were still new and full of life and there was so much to see, so much to take in, so many conflicting emotions thrashing around in me, for the sword was heavy but the garden exquisite, the humans adorable. Over the days I watched them, first come into being and then discover themselves, each other and the world. They were fascinating to watch, just as all the animals coming in to being had been fascinating to watch, but these ones were special, it was obvious from the start, their feelings as complicated as ours could be, their thoughts, their speech, their ways so utterly endearing. I could not, in truth, work out if they even liked each other, though it did not stop them doing what all the other animals did._

_This too was fascinating, for their forms were now like ours; the acts they demonstrated suddenly viewable in a perspective that could apply to us now. I wonder if I blushed to see them. Certainly they themselves were innocent yet, right up until the serpent came._

_I saw it, I admit, slithering up from under the earth, poking its head up to see where it was, darting under again as soon as it noticed the angel nearby. It had been going all the way around the garden doing this. The other guards had tried to attack it, somehow we had all guessed what its purpose had to be, but I thought – when I saw the flicker of that tongue, the shine in those yellow eyes – I thought – not for the first time – well, what was wrong with knowledge, anyway? I thought to myself, after all what a beautiful creature it was, scales shining in the sun. I turned away and pretended I had not seen._

_I did not recognise you then, not quite, but I found myself wishing I could touch those shining scales; certainly I wished I would see that snake again._

___x___

“And you did,” Crowley says - “How'd that go for you?”

Aziraphale's reminiscences have taken them all the way home and upstairs to bed and here they lie, angel and demon, curled into each other in the middle of the bed, limbs entwined, faces close.

“Well seeing as we're both naked and in bed in a house of our own, my dear, I'd say it went fairly well.”

“Do try not to be an arse angel, you know I mean at the time.”

“Hmmm” - Aziraphale's forehead crumples in thought - “Yes I've been thinking about that – how I remember it and how you remember it, I think I'd like – well I wonder if -”

“Yeah?”

“ - if I could see into your head, see how it was to you, and if you could see inside mine – we swapped bodies, do you think we could – swap – memories?”

“I don't see why not. I spoke to you in your head before. Yeah, alright let's give it a go.”

“Like the body swap but pretend we're not corporeal?”

“I guess? Like a push – but with your mind?”

They push out with theirminds, seeking each other. They crash. Fall back.

“Try again?”

“Again. Yes. Gently this time.”

Aziraphale takes a huge breath.

“It's a memory share angel, not an underwater dive.”

“Shut up, it helps!”

“K, whatever floats.”

“If I don't need to deep breathe, you definitely don't need to hold your nose.”

““It helps!””

“That is _not _what I sound like!”

“Shutit! Concentrate!”

“I can't when you're making silly faces, are you six thousand or six?”

“Okay, okay I'm serious!”

“Don't giggle!”

“Right!”

“Fine!”

Several giggles later and another two failed attempts, and Aziraphale feels the fingers of his mind interlacing with the fingers of Crowley's like two liquids mixing together, like holding hands but in their heads. It feels comfortable, right, and when he listens he can hear -

_The first thing I remember is a feeling like I knew you -_

_I remember that too -oh we're doing it!_

_I remember thinking that you were the one who had let me in -_

_Well I don't know about that -_

_I thought – this one, this one is different, two of the others actually tried to kill me, the third didn't see me and then you -_

_I felt you slither up behind me, and when you changed I could only look at you quickly for recognition, I thought you would have to hear my heart beat for the commotion it was causing me – I knew you couldn't remember me -_

_But I remembered you, or a least the idea of you, I had to talk to you, seeing you there on that wall, like I was a fish being reeled in towards you -_

_We'd been taught to be so nervous of demons, and I _was _-but then – it was _you _and when you spoke it sounded like you, it felt like you, and here I was giddy with the joy of it but at the same time my heart was breaking because you didn't know me -_

_and at the same time I was wondering -_

_if I'd done the wrong thing -_

_if I'd done the right thing -_

_God had already said She was watching me, this had to be the sort of thing She was watching for – giving away the sword, I mean, but maybe not, maybe She was watching this too -_

_All I could think was – this one's different, he's not like the others, this one's good – which was ridiculous because angels are meant to be good, but for the most part they're not, you were special and it felt funny this feeling – like I had felt it before – like I had felt it before about you -_

_I almost slipped up right then and called you by your name but I remembered – that you wouldn't know it, that you would have another by now, that to remember might kill you – still, I came so close but I let you tell me all the same -_

_I didn't ask – should have asked but I knew your name because they'd told me when I got sent up, the names of all the angels on watch. It can hurt a demon to say an angel's name, you know, holy things, names – but I tasted yours on my tongue and even though it fizzed and crackled the taste was familiar and delicious and I wanted to say it right then but there was no way -_

_There was no way of saying _Raphael _that would not have hurt you at the very least, though I was half ready to run to you shouting it out -_

_There was no way I could say your name without dropping each syllable like a new temptation, only it was a temptation I was falling for right then -_

_But I wanted -_

_But I wanted -_

_You, it was always you and you were still you and it was so much more than I had hoped for, whatever your name, it didn't matter, it doesn't matter – that instinct would never change, to lean to you, to want you, to protect you with my wing – instinct -_

_You did and it was the first kindness I remember, there was none of that in Hell, little enough in Heaven and I loved you already besides, moving in to you like you had pulled me to your side – where I was meant to be -_

_Meant to be, yes – that feeling of meant to be -_

_It's going away -_

_Yes, it's going away -_

They blink rapidly, two sets of eyes fluttering back into the physical world and in seconds they are holding on to each other like they will never let go.

“Yes,” one says and nods, and the other replies -

“Yes,” and that is all.

__x__

**Pssst yes they were dreamfasting.....sort of a teaser that for my next fic which is gonna be a Good Omens/ Dark Crystal crossover (look I know how bonkers that sounds but the idea's in my head and I can't shift it!) – still gonna be Crowley/Aziraphale though. And no they're not gonna be Gelflings though Agnes Nutter and Anathema will be :-) **

**Aaanyway, teasers for the next fic aside this is actually the penultimate chapter! :-( Also kudos if anyone noticed the Silent Hill reference in this one or the Paradise Lost one in the last :-)**


	10. Chapter 10

**10.**

“I didn't like your name,” Aziraphale says suddenly. It's the morning after the mind swap and they are having breakfast at the kitchen table.

“Oh well, ta very much.”

“No I mean _Crawly – _it was never very you.”

“Would anything have been?”

“Hmmm,” he takes a contemplative sip of tea - “No I suppose not – I mean you looked a little different -”

“A _little!” _

“Yes that's what I said. But you were still the – the – entity I knew – still – can I say -”

“Yes, you can say _Raphael.”_

“Well, you were. But you weren't, and either way I couldn't call you that. Let's just say when you told me you'd chosen a new name it sounded right; not just the name, I mean the fact that _you _chose it. Perhaps I'm just being silly, but it wasn't angelic, and it wasn't given to you by Hell it was – well, it was yours. You. I like it.”

“Yeah.” Crowley nods; he has been coming to a lot of conclusions these past few days but liking his name and all that this entails does seem to be the best possible summary of it all - “Me too.”

Aziraphale smiles, stirs his tea, finishes up with the morning paper, hands it across the table to Crowley, who does the crossword with his tongue stuck just a little out and then throws it in the bin. He looks across the table at his angel, who smiles, and he smiles. He takes his hand and leads him to the sofa where they curl up, his head in Aziraphale's lap, the angel picking up his book off the arm of the chair.

He is thinking about tenderness and how he has been so afraid of losing it. Afraid that they could never regain what they had before Aziraphale let that one word slip and the memories washed him out like a deluge. He's not afraid any more. He remembers who he is, who they are, who they always have been and everything they have done. His mind comes to rest on another beginning, playing that night over for every detail in his head.

_We had held hands on the bus all the way home, shy soft hands, like kids discovering intimacy for the first time. I could hardly meet your eye- I couldn't meet your eye. All I could do was look down and remember to stay alive – breathing wasn't even necessary and I was definitely forgetting about that – looking down, all I could see was your hand in mine, your warm, surprisingly firm hold making me feel like a shivering innocent. I could hardly connect the sight of our hands with the awareness that one of them was mine – and the other one yours – I will never know how I sat so still, there were fireworks going off inside me, loud and bright and expansive. _

_My thoughts were flying apart in glorious rockets – how I wanted this journey to never end, even though frankly I hated buses, they were vessels of pure irritation in a hundred different ways – my fault, actually, but anyway. But this bus tonight – it felt lit up from the inside like a front room at Christmas seen from the street at night. Confession time – might as well, since I'm gearing up for some big ones – I loved Christmas, always had, even though your side started it (and ours carried on the tradition all the way through gluttony and greed to envy and pride). I loved the way you bimbled (yes that's the best word) round your shop at those times, singing merrily to yourself while you hung up decorations. I loved the way you bundled up to go carol singing, the way you'd invite me out for Christmas dinner almost guiltily and later try to tempt me (yes – tempt – you'd become frankly good at it over the years) into some vilely heinous traditions of Christmas gaming over port and cheese boards at the bookshop until late at night. I loved every present you ever awkwardly mentioned might have my name on it underneath your tree. I loved, I loved, I loved -_

_And I was going to tell you! I knew it when you took my hand. When we got back to my place – oh Heaven, oh Hell, you had acquiesced, hadn't you? This was all I could take your hand in mine as proof of; you were coming, weren't you? Love was ready to explode from the pores of this body – well, it had been for six thousand years, but I'd been keeping it down for fear you would notice. How you hadn't – well – you always were the stupidest clever person I'd ever met. _

_I didn't want the bus to ever pull up but I did and it did and -_

“_Ah,” you said, looking around you on the pavement - “Here we are then”._

_I had rather wished you wouldn't speak, but it was a wish I never expected to get any joy of. _

“_So -” I have a desperately awful feeling I stuck my hands in my pockets and scuffed the pavement with a toe - “You're coming up then?”_

_Did I make it sound chill? I would have given a limb to make it sound chill. _

“_I – am.”_

_I could hear in your voice that you had expected a more prevaricating answer from yourself just as I had. I didn't know what to do, in the absence of knowing I came close to an actual -_yeah cool okay yeah you go on in then –_ and just as close to yelling _fine! You do you! _as though I were angry about it. I was a mess, angel. The stone cold truth is that what actually came out of my mouth was -_

“_Ngk.”_

_You nodded and said, _

“_Right then,” - and I followed you inside. When we reached it, I simply stared at the door to my flat as though I didn't know what to do with it. For some reason I wanted to unlock it even though I'd never had a key but for some reason I'd forgotten to will it open. I was just thinking it would take a miracle to survive the next few minutes when the door swung open and you shrugged a little apologetically and I made it though with a -_

“_Right then,” too long a pause, and then - “Come in.”_

_And there you were; an angel in my flat. I had imagined it so many times it half felt more like a memory. Except that in those memories I always knew what I was doing, I was confident, elated, all over you – but that was the problem, wasn't it? I had imagined it so many times that all of those memories came back to me now and I could not look you in the eye for picturing them. I desperately needed you – well that much had always been true – but more than anything, right at that point I just needed you to help me out of my misery. You did, thank god, my perfect angel, but you did._

“_So. Show me around?”_

_You gave it a half raised eyebrow that made me feel like a terrible host, and let me tell you that was a wonderful feeling compared to everything else._

“_Right.”_

_Every time I snuck a glance at you there was the most incomprehensibel look on your face, a faint smile that I liked but could not read. The conversation in the plant room (“Crowley, why on earth are these plants so terrified?”) and then – I was praying that somehow you wouldn't notice the statue, but oh lord help me (not that She would) there you were looking at it quizzically and I prayed you woukldn't say anything but oh god -_

“_Crowley – what are those two angels doing?”_

“_Gnnnn -”_

“_-?”_

“_Fighting. The angel and the – um demon – they're fighting.”_

“_Hmm,” you said, positively passive agressively, and walked on._

_I forgot the word for bedroom and thankfully you took your head out of that room almost as soon as you'd popped it round the door. _

_Somehow or other we ended up in the kitchen; it wasn't much of a kitchen and really it was just for show._

“_Do you want um – tea? I can miracle a kettle and -”_

“_No – thank you.”_

“_Well, um -”_

“_Crowley.” You looked at me then so acutely I had to make eye contact. I hoped you could not hear my heart beat, could not hear the yelling in my stupid head that just cried _angelinmyflat!angelinmyflat! _I prayed (figure of speech) as I had been doing for the last six thousand years that you could not feel my love. I did not know what I feared more in those seconds – that you would finally talk about the six thousand years of hopeless love or that we would dance around the issue for another six thousand._

“_Crowley, really – what _are _the angel and the demon doing?”_

_Arghhhhh._

“_They're fucking!” I yelled, oh Hell, oh Heaven - “The angel and the demon are fucking, okay? Happy now?”_

“_Yes,” you said calmly - “I thought so,” and then you kissed me._

_Confession time – not a thing I'm used to, I admit – but confession time, I had a moment where I did not know what to do. I had thought about this so many times, so many more times than it felt as though I should have, thought about this repeatedly over the centuries, that now that it was happening I almost forgot to open my mouth. Because you see, for all of those thoughts, for every time I had imagined kissing you I had never once imagined that you would ever be the one to kiss me. But you tasted of tea and sweetness, candlelight and old books – you tasted of Heaven and a part of me came so close to remembering I might have broken right then, but it was a half memory like a dream – a whispered voice saying this was not the first time and I met your kiss like Heaven meets the earth, mixing together until they inhabit the same space. My love, my love, my love - _

_I moved away from you for the strength of needing to say it out loud – my love, my love, my angel, oh my Aziraphale – but you looked at me and smiled and it was all there in your eyes: that I did _not _need to say it, that you knew, that you had always known, of course. Idiot. You could feel it, you had always been able to feel it. I could see as well that you had always felt it too – for the first time I could feel love like you could, as though there was a part of you in me giving me angelic abilities just like there was a little bit of Hell in you. In that instant I knew this, though I did not as yet remember how or why. ._

_You shook your head just fractionally, shaking away the need to speak, and you curled your hand around my neck to pull me in and I was lost to you, I had always been lost to you only now I knew that it was in this losing that we become found, in giving that we receive and the rest of the prayer of St. Francis suddenly swimming painlessly around my head, because it was the truth of loving you and you loving me – as to love with all my soul he said, and it was true enough to cry to. Your kiss was clarity, it was consolation; not to be dramatic angel, but you felt like salvation. I half cried that night from my own tenderness – because how could I touch you, after all, in the end except with the most reverent fingers and worshipping of kisses? This had been well beyond the scope of my imagination, just like the fact of your intensity, your confidence and power. I surrendered to you utterly, to Heaven again._

_After that first time, we went again and the second and third times it was more like I had thought of it, snarling and biting and desperate. I claimed you as my own that night, and the claim was long overdue and given back in kind. I was yours and you were mine and though this had always been true this was like a seal on that truth, the wrapping up of all our arrangements. _

_In the early hours of morning you worked out what to do with the final prophecy. Half asleep you murmured -_

“_Inside you.”_

“_What?”_

“_You could be in my body -”_

“_I just was -”_

“_Do shut up. And I could be in yours -”_

“_Again angel -”_

“_The Prophecy you numpty – _choose your faces wisely – _remember?”_

“_Oh -” it didn't seem even faintly important - “Yeah. Okay.”_

_And that, as they say was that. _

___x___

“_Crowley,” _Crowley says suddenly, and Aziraphale puts down his book as though he has just been waiting for him to speak - “That's what you said – the first night we were together – you called me Crowley.”

“Yes. It's your name, dear.”

“Nah angel, I'm not being thick – point is – point is, you unmade me that night. Then you made me again and – I dunno but it didn't sound like you were in any doubt when you said that name - as to that being who I was.”

“I wasn't. I'm not.”

“You're not?”

“No. You are?”

It is only half a question; he knows Crowley's doubt, knows it and feels responsible for it. He disentangles himself gently, goes through to the kitchen and puts the kettle on, in this way acknowledging in the most British way possible that he respects this conversation for the crisis that it signifies. A crisis which, while maybe only in Crowley's head, is no less vital to their life for being so.

As the kettle steams and finally builds to a whistle – because Aziraphale had insisted that whistling kettles were charming even though now, only weeks after getting one, he has already realised his error – Crowley thinks about the question. These past couple of days he has done nothing other than wonder who he is; what his “Real” name is, who it makes him, if it makes him anything at all or if it is _everything. _Angel or demon, good or bad, one thing or another, can it all really be wrapped up in what he feels comfortable calling himself? Has he really ever considered a return to Raphael?

No. He realises he hasn't, and neither, it occurs to him now, has Aziraphale thought that he might. But yes, it _is _important, it does matter, his name as a description of him, has to fit the way he sees himself and even though he knows his own answer already, he has to ask, as the angel potters back into the living room with two cups of tea, balancing a plate of biscuits between them. The question comes out of him in the form of a line from one of Aziraphale's favorite plays.

“Angel, I don't mean to be inquisitive, but would you mind telling me who I am?”

Aziraphale smiles at the reference but he shakes his head.

“That's not for me to say.”

“Then tell me my name at least.”

“Crowley.”

“And was I always Crowley to you?”

“No, of course you weren't, not before you were – but don't you think maybe who you were can inform who you are without you being that person any more? I was wrong to use the name – it was a memory – a memory that had been trapped six thousand years on the tip of my tongue. I am sorry my dear. I know who you are.”

“Crowley,” he nods to himself, because he knows it, because he chose it all by himself, because even though it is just a word it has always been _his _word, always felt descriptive of who he was, always felt well – simply and ineffably _right. _And at the end of the day, important or not, that was just about all that mattered.

“Yes,” Aziraphale nods, settling back into the sofa, popping his mug on the chair arm, the plate balanced between them. “Glad we sorted that out”. It sounds as though he is being flip, but Crowley knows he isn't. Somehow it is so much better and so very much more _Aziraphale _than uttering some kind of _Go Forth And Be Crowley Now. _He is simply _glad –_ he can always read the truth of the angel's gladness in his face; it shines out of him like sunbeams.

“My Aziraphale,” he says, beaming himself, and the angel's eyes sparkle back at him, remembering a thousand _My Aziraphales, _a thousand _My Raphaels –_ offered back and forth like prayers to each other.

“My Crowley,” he says and the light in his eyes is golden full of brightness and vision and truth.“Biscuit?”

“Mmm, alright – Jammy Dodgers?”

“Uff, really my dear – they're Jam and Creams; jam without the cream is positively demonic.”

“If you say so, angel. Pink wafer, then.”

“Good. Mine's a bourbon or two.”

“Or four.”

“Do shut up, dear boy.”

“I love you, angel.”

“I love you too. Eat your biscuit.”

__x__

**Finished! I took like weeks writing this because I didn't WANT it to be finished- but I didn't want to ruin it by eking it out beyond necessary either so. It was supposed to end on the line _My Aziraphale – My Crowley – _but what can I do? These idiots just kept talking about biscuits! :-P **

**Anyway I hope yous found the ending satisfying. The play Crowley was quoting was _The Importance of Being Earnest _in my head it's practically canon that Aziraphale loves Oscar Wilde – whether or not it's actually canon idek. :-P**

**For my next fic Crowley and Aziraphale are going to be a skeksis and a mystic. If you're in my head it really does make sense. :-PPPP**


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